


Taken

by beetle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:55:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My late contribution to the Color, Sound, Random Object Spander ficathon *waves at _sharvie_ and blows kisses*</p>
<p>Saturday, March 5th.<br/>Author name: _sharvie_<br/>Preferred rating and genre: NC-17, romantic angst<br/>Your Colour: Black<br/>Your Sound: Rain hitting something: ie, rooftop, street, ground<br/>Your Random Object: supernatural/mystical knife or dagger<br/>Two things you'd like included: Spike and Xander slowly falling in love and<br/>hot man on man sex. (addendum: Forgot to specify 'a first time with another<br/>man for one of the boys' in the Hot man on man sex part of the requests.)<br/>Two things you don't want included: Fluff/schmoop and OOC's</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All Joss's.  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for “Welcome To The Hellmouth” and “The Harvest”. (Mostly) set in S4, goes AU early and obviously. Spike and Xand still live in the Basement of Doom.

**September, 1996**  
  
"Jesse, I know there's still a part of you in there!”  
  
Around them, the chaos of the Harvest has turned The Bronze into mass hysteria, but their own, quieter drama plays out, nonetheless.  
  
Jesse smiles, all teeth and no mercy. “Okay. . . let's deal with this.  _Jesse_  was an excruciating loser who couldn't get a date with anyone in the sighted community! Look at me. I'm a new man!”  
  
“No, Jess -”  
  
Jesse picks Xander up by the jacket and slams him against a wall, completely ignoring the shaking stake Xander has pointed at his chest.  
  
“Oh, alright! Put me out of my misery!” Jesse intones dramatically, his mouth twitching like he can’t decide between a smile and a sneer. When Xander makes no move to stake him, he settles on a sneer. “You don't have the guts.”  
  
Xander opens his mouth to say - what, he doesn’t know, for once, words have failed him miserably - when motion catches his eye. Some screaming patron about to slam into Jesse. . . and slam Jesse right into -  
  
Xander doesn’t think, just drops the stake as the screamer runs by, knocking Jesse into him then disappearing into the gloom and mayhem that is The Bronze.  
  
Xander’s head hits the wall with a  _thud_.   
  
“Ouch.” Kinda hard to say when the wind’s been knocked and the sense has been knocked out of him. He's sure that not only is he about to die, but he’s also given himself a concussion.  
  
“Shit! Fuck!” There’s air, suddenly, as Jesse pushes himself away. “Jesus, Xan are you -?”   
  
Jesse must’ve forgotten he’s now an evil bastard because he’s in human-face and looking worried, young. At least Xander thinks he looks that way, can’t really tell with his vision all blurry and double-y. By the time he blinks it clear, Jesse’s sneering again, backing away from Xander.  
  
“I must’ve been a real loser to hang out with a loser like  _you_.”   
  
Then Jesse’s gone, disappearing into the darkness from which he’d came.  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
A rainy Saturday. The perfect day to do laundry, even if half of it is your lazy, undead roomie’s.  
  
“Harris?”  
  
Ah, the cry of the aforementioned undead roomie. An annoying sort of cry, but the soothing sound of rain hitting the window cancels it out -   
  
“Harris. Harris. Harris. Haaaarrriiiiissss.”  
  
\- though it would be nice if Spike were rendered magically mute. Xander thinks almost yearningly of The Gentlemen and has to remind himself:  _evil. Evil. Evil._  
  
“What is it, Spike?”  
  
“‘M bored.”  
  
“How sad for you.”  
  
“Entertain me.”  
  
Xander looks up from his laundry sorting. The bleached leech is currently sprawled all over Xander’s bed, flipping through one of Xander’s comics - that has lost value, now that it’s out of the original plastic - and smoking a cigarette.  
  
“You know what’s really entertaining, Spike? Especially for 200 year old moochers? Doing your own laundry, paying rent. . . oh, and getting your own fucking place. Those are three really engrossing - not to mention rewarding - activities for 200 year old master vampires.”  
  
“First off, Crackity Jones, I’m not even 150, second - master vampires don’t do laundry. Third, we also don’t pay rent. Fourth, I’d leave this dank, stench-ridden hovel right now, if I could, but I don’t want Slutty thinkin’ I’ve reverted back to m’ old ways, now do I?” Spike glances up at Xander, gives him a big sneer before returning his attention to _Hellboy’s_  continuing adventures. “‘Sides. It’s an honor to do my laundry, y’know?”  
  
“Oh, really?” Xander picks up one of Spike’s - surprise - black t-shirts, which is riddled with cigarette burns and what looks like a bullet hole. “I don’t feel honored.”  
  
“You Americans have no sense of respect, is what. I’m William-the-bloody- _Bloody_ , mate. Bask in my presence.”  
  
Xander snorts, balls up the shirt and tosses it to Spike, who catches it without even looking up. “I think that one’s ready for t-shirt heaven. Or hell, considering whose it is.”  
  
Spike puts down the comic book to examine his shirt, turning to several different angles, muttering to himself. Finally, he gives it a sniff, makes a face and lobs it at the garbage can.  
  
“It’s probably gonna take at least six washes to get out that stench, it’s as good as garbage.”  
  
“What stench?”   
  
Hawaiian shirt? So needs to be washed and in it goes. Swish!  
  
“The stench of sweat and fast food. Remind me not to mix my laundry with yours, mate.”   
  
“There are times when I really hate you, Spike.”  
  
“I’m the coolest person you know, don’t pretend otherwise. Oi, gimme ten bucks.”  
  
Hey, a five-spot in the back pocket of his cargo pants!   
  
“No. Why?”  
  
“Wanna see a movie. Gotta find some way to keep entertained, if  _you’re_  not gonna entertain me.” A leer that probably means nothing at all, but still makes Xander blush.  
  
Spike smirks and goes back to  _Hellboy_. Xander never has a comeback for the smirks, sneers and leers, so he lets the pitter-patter of rain fill the comfortable silence.  
  
“Hey, aren’t you the  _Big Bad_? I figured you’d sneak into movies, not pay to get in like us happy meals. Tsk-tsk.”  
  
“'Course I sneak in, but I can’t very well sneak things from the concession stand, can I? I'm a vampire, not Houdini." _You git_  remains unsaid, butr heavily implied. "And popcorn tastes better when you’ve paid for it.” Spike shrugs. Xander can’t tell if he’s kidding or not and just lets it slide.  
  
“I take it you’ve never tasted movie popcorn? Stop smoking in here! NO smoking around my comics!”  
  
Spike rolls his eyes, but the lighter gets put away, the cigarette goes back behind Spike's ear. “Bitch, bitch, bitch, Harris. Gettin' domestic about this pit. . . you’re a sorry sod, aren’t you?”  
  
“Gee, Spike, lemme go get my wallet, right now! Ten bucks, didja say?” Xander snorts and sets the washing machine.  _Fast food/sweat stench? Prepare to meet your doom._  
  
“Can come with, if you like.”  
  
Xander looks up, frowning. Spike is once again flipping through the comic book with a staggering lack of interest, but - what just happened? Did Spike just ask him to hang out?   
  
Xander’s sure he heard wrong. “What?”  
  
Spike glances up then back down quickly. “My good deed for the decade. And you can buy me Twizzlers and nachos.”  
  
“Ah, it all comes clear.” Xander stretches and has a sit-down in the torture chair, which is indeed torturous, but provides an excellent view of the undead roomie. Always a good idea to keep an eye on the undead roomie.  
  
“Does it?” Dry sarcasm and Xander can see Spike’s lips quirk.  
  
“Crystal.”  _Not like I have anything else to do today, besides more laundry._  “Alright, sure, why not?”  
  
“Right, then. But ‘m not sneakin’  _you_  in,” Spike warns. “You’ll probably just get us caught.”  
  
“Fine, just as long as you don’t expect me to pay your way.”  
  
“Don’t need you to. Just need something to nibble on.” Spike’s eyes flick down to Xander’s neck so fast, Xander’s not even sure it happened.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See chapter 1 for summary, spoilers, etc.

**June, 1997**  
  
As much as Xander loves summer - no school, say yay! - it’s the time of year when the ‘rents have their most fierce yelling/throwing matches.  
  
Take tonight, for instance. Those lovely screeches winding out of the house, the ones that sound like the death throes of the world’s largest, angriest flightless bird? Why, dear old mom, who else? That return volley of near-intelligible growling and sniping?   
  
“Oh, mine papa, to me you are so wise. . . .” Xander sings as he slides down into the sleeping bag a bit further.   
  
And is he even a little apprehensive about sleeping outside? Nope. Sunnydale is now a relatively safe town, thanks to the Buffmeister (with a little help from her friends). Now that the Master is the kind of dead that doesn’t come back, life is fairly quiet. No news reports of “death by meatfork”, no prophecies most dire - just yet; Buffy’s only been gone a few days and the demon community is no doubt still wary of her return - not so much as a single mysterious disappearance.  
  
Life on the Hellmouth is a little less hell-y, something which fills Xander with immeasurable relief. Especially with the way the ‘rents are currently fighting. Their skirmishes usually range all throughout the house and the only room consistently left uninvaded or unscathed is the basement. But Xander isn’t desperate enough to be sleeping in _there_ , no sir! Any place is better than the Basement of Doom, even if there is a - slight - risk of being eaten.  
  
And the stars are kinda nice.   
  
“Sleeping bags. . . not just for Yuletime, anymore. . . .” Xander sighs.  
  
With some CCR in his walkman -  _lookit all the happy creatures dancin’ on the lawn_  - Xander encourages the heaviness of his eyelids. In minutes, he’s asleep, John Fogarty coloring the canvas of his dreams.  
  
Silent and unmoving - except to dispatch an overly-curious, overly-stupid fledge prowling around the makeshift campsite - Xander’s self-named protector keeps watch.  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
“Well, that was nice. . . visually stunning and a tour-de-force of imagination. . . .”   
  
“‘S crap, that’s what it was,” Spike says around his last bit of Twizzler, glaring at their fellow movie-goers. They'd obviously enjoyed the film, though not Spike's loud scoffing and heckling during the love scenes, action scenes and denouement. Xander's one attempt to shut the Shameless Undead up had earned him a two-fingered salute.  
  
“I leave it to you, Spike, to find the least tactful way of saying something.” Xander rolls his eyes in exasperation, though it's mostly for show. He’d never admit it, but he thinks Spike was way more entertaining than the movie.  
  
“What? Not like you weren’t thinkin’ the same thing, Harris. Just flapped your gob longer sayin’ it.” Spike lights a cigarette with almost palpable relief, meeting each and every horrified glance he gets from the people in the crowded lobby with his own laconic, ‘fuck you, very much’ grin. “Let’s go to Willy’s and wash the taste of that dreck out of our mouths.”  
  
“I dunno. . . I’m kinda tired. I gotta be up at five tomorrow.” The fresh - hehe - air of Main St. is warm, dry, breezeless, but still nice after the stuffy, recycled air in the theater.   
  
“Don’t be such a tee-totaling pillock - I'm buying, hey?” Spike grabs Xander's arm and steers them west on Main. Toward Willy's.  
  
Xander lets himself be dragged along for a few feet, all the while looking at Spike warily, one might even say suspiciously. “Who are you and what have you done with the  _real_  Spike?”  
  
This earns Xander a leer, instead of the famed two-fingered salute. “Ha-bloody-ha, mate. Look, it's not like I have to worry about you drinkin’ me outta my dosh, is it? One fruity, foofy umbrella drink and you’ll be at your limit.” Spike’s not even trying to hide his laugh.   
  
“It’s nice to know you think so highly of me. And I'm really enjoying this  _Beaches_  moment we're having. Really. But -" Xander swings their little traveling vaudeville act eastward, basement-ward.  
  
"What's this? A  _Harris_ , turnin’ down free booze? You’re a discredit to the name, boy," Spike drawls.  
  
"Come on, Spike, I’ve got an early shift at the Doublemeat Palace, tomorrow, so I really should pack it in. . . not that I'm not all over the thought of hanging out at a demon bar where I may or may not be eaten. Or thrilled at the chance to hang out with my favorite undead basement-buddy. . . .” Xander trails off because Spike is no longer walking next to him, the cool, strong hand is no longer closed - possessively? - on his elbow.   
  
Spike is about ten steps behind Xander, stock-still and lighting another cigarette, eyes on his hands. Xander has seen Spike complete this particular ritual while stalking and beheading demons. Why all the concentration, this time?  
  
“Right, then. I’ll see you home, make sure nothin’ nasty gets it’s claws in ya, and find someone else to drink with.” Spike’s voice sounds the same as it ever does and he doesn’t look any different, but -  
  
 _Did I just offend him? Or - gasp - hurt his_ feelings _? I didn't even know he had those. . . ._  
  
“Wait - um. . . .” Really, if Xander somehow has the power to hurt Spike’s feelings, he doesn’t want it. “Yeah, sure, why not?” Comes out of Xander's mouth at the same time his brain starts screaming,  _What the hell are you doing? Five a.m.! Five! Ayyyyy! Emmmmm!_  
  
The gilt-edged glance and smirk Spike throws Xander’s way  _does_  manage to shut his brain up momentarily. He’s been giving in to Spike’s - ahem -  _requests_  all day, why stop now?   
  
 _Five ayyyyy emmmmm. . . ._  
  
 _Be quiet, you,_  Xander tells his brain, not for the first time. As usual, his brain pays him no mind whatsoever and seems prepared to keep haranguing him for awhile, yet.  
  
 _Since when does Spike's happiness any control over what I do? And - here’s a poser -_  why  _does Spike's happiness have any influence over what I do?_  
  
This is the last, desperate squeak of Xander’s rational mind before he ruthlessly ignores it altogether.   
  
"Well, be still, my beating heart, Harris has grown himself a pair." Spike's eyes flick down to Xander's fly, then Xander's neck and last, his eyes. Spike's own are amused and challenging as he stalks over, takes Xander’s arm and steers him west again. "And a fine pair, they are, at that. Let's get a move on, mate."   
  
 _Did Spike just give me the elevator eyes then_ flirt _with me? The old once-over and shinola? Is that what just happened or have I gone insane? That last one probably._  
  
There's no way, just no freakin' way Xander's picking up the  _date-vibe_  from all the touching and semi-flirting. Never mind the fact that by the time they reach the corner, Spike's hand has traveled down Xander's arm and is loosely holding Xander's hand.   
  
Just never mind that, please and thank you.  
  
“Yeah, we’ll go, we’ll drink, we’ll try to stay unmurdered. It’ll be a mitzvah. Hey, maybe I’ll manage to drink you under the table.”   
  
“Right. That’s likely to happen.” They wait for an SUV to lumber it's way through a turn and Spike’s smirky-voice gets even smirkier, if that’s possible. “But y'welcome to try. In fact, I encourage it. I’ll bet you're fun when you're. . . pliant."  
  
Xander does  _not_  know how to respond to that, laughs nervously, and stares at his feet. Notices he needs new sneakers, which means rebudgetting the next five abysmally small paychecks.   
  
When Spike squeezes his hand, he looks up. All traces of smirk, sneer or leer are gone and Spike looks like he's about to say something Xander's not sure he wants to hear. In fact, he's practicing the  _la-la-_  song in his head when Spike's mouth opens, closes, then opens again.  
  
"Just don't take advantage of my fiscal generosity, eh? Go easy on the strawberry daquiris or Shirley Temples or whatever your poncy swill of choice is.”   
  
It's been a long, wiggy sort of evening, with the almost-flirting and the  _looks_  and the hand-holding, but finally. Finally, a facet of Spike that Xander's not only comfortable with, but one he knows how to respond to.  
  
“Cheapo bloodsucker.” Is that relief in his voice?  
  
“Stupid sod.” That's definitely relief in  _Spike's_  voice. Xander’s unsure of how he feels about that.  
  
“Second-rate movie-buddy.” Well, unsure except for the relief.  
  
“Escaped mental patient.” A nice effort from the evil undead, but easily turned to Xander’s own uses.  
  
“Let’s leave your ex-girlfriend out of it.” Check and mate, bloodsucker!  
  
“At least I’ve actually had sex, virgin-boy.” Ouch!  
  
“Hey -!” Xander's about to hotly deny that allegation - between psycho!Faith and the dancers at The Fabulous Ladies Night Club, his sexual education's been fairly thorough - when a new voice cuts in from behind them both:  
  
“God, you two should just make out, already.” 


	3. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See chapter 1 for summary, spoilers, etc.

**July, 1997**  
  
Damn the Doublemeat Palace’s two-for-the-price-of-one burger specials!   
  
It’s all their fault that Xander’s surrounded by three vamps and being backed into the alley between the DMP and _Sunnydale Marine Supply_.  
  
Maybe the stupes are from out-of-town, don’t know there’s a Slayer-in-residence at this particular Hellmouth. Maybe they just don’t give a shit. They look kinda clueless, even for fledges. Or maybe this is a grease-induced nightmare! Yes, Xander's really at home, in bed and dreaming this whole damn thing!  
  
 _Nothing but a glob of mustard and a bit of underdone potato, or whatever it was Billy Shakespeare said._  
  
Xander really hopes it’s all a nightmare, since the sweating and mental-babbling is getting him precisely nowhere.   
  
“Look, guys, I’m just a measly kid, barely a pint of blood in me. I'm all skin and bones, see -?” Xander pulls up his t-shirt, exposing ribs and hoping to God the moonlight is bleaching him bone-white and unappetizing. “I’m pasty and stringy and totally not worth the hassle of eating."   
  
The three vamps - who are already Moe, Larry and Curly-Joe, in Xander’s panicking mind - do not look convinced at all. Hell, Larry - the vamp with the strawberry-blond mop-top - is actually licking his lips.  
  
 _Eww!_  Xander hastily pulls down his shirt and backs deeper into the alley. His vampire fanclub follows, less than ten feet away.  
  
“Bet he tastes all greasy and salty,” Curly-Joe says, lagging a few steps behind his comrades. (He is indeed bald, but there the resemblance to the real Curly-Joe DeRita ends, what with the muscles, piercings and tats.) “He was coming out of the Doublemeat Palace. . . and it’s two-for-the-price-of-one Wednesdays. . . ." Curly-Joe gives Xander an admonishing look.   
  
"Hey! When you're not hunting innocent people to drink their blood, you can criticize my diet, plasma-breath!" Xander snaps. Some part of his brain is urging silence, but Curly-Joe going all nutritionist is really just the unliving _end_.  
  
"I'm just sayin'. . . salt, sugar, sulphides - all that shit'll kill ya.” Curly-Joe shrugs defensively.  
  
 _Actually, I'm fairly sure_ you're _gonna kill me_ , Xander thinks, but clamps his teeth on that little quip.   
  
“You know what? Who gives a rat's ass?" Moe glares at Larry and Curly-Joe. She’s tall and mean-looking, with a thunderous scowl and inky, black hair that hangs in her creepy, yellow eyes. "It’s not like you’re a vegetarian, anymore. You’re a fuckin’  _vampire_!”   
  
“Well, yeah, but he’s gonna taste like cow and preservatives and growth hormones and that's so not cool!” Curly-Joe whines.  
  
“We're supposed to let him walk away just 'cause he don't taste like a fuckin'  _granola bar_? What are you, some kinda blood-connoisseur?” Larry starts laughing. Xander slowly backs toward the end of the alley while Moe and Larry's attention is on new-age Curly-Joe.  
  
Oh, he wants to sprint for the wall and leap it like an Olympiad, but something he heard in a movie or read in a comic book comes back to him.  
  
 _Never run from an immortal. It only attracts their attention._  
  
Xander's ass hits the wall and the argument of mental giants goes on in truly surreal fashion. “Hey, if you wanna toxify your chakras -”  
  
“Toxify my what-the-fuck?”   
  
“- then that’s your business, man. I’m gonna go hunt near  _The Organic Groove_. There’s this hot vegan chick working the counter. . . I’ll take a pass on burger-boy.”  
  
Curly-Joe makes a sardonic bow to his companions before ambling out of the alley.   
  
Though reluctant to turn his back on the vamps, Xander does and is faced with eight feet of wall to scale. An easy task, if he was Peter Parker, but he's not. Never has he been less Peter Parker than he is in this moment. Still, if he could just jump high enough to grab the ledge -  
  
Yes, we have ledge-age!  
  
“. . . he’s so fucking finicky,” Larry is saying disdainfully. There's a slightly too long silence that makes Xander glance back over his shoulder, even though his arms are aching. Moe has finally glanced back down the alley, her eyes flashing baleful, bitter yellow even in the moonlight.   
  
“Shut up and grab the kid before he gets away, space cadet!” She does  _not_  sound happy.  
  
"Ah, shit -"   
  
 _So much for the Great Escape!_  Xander tries to scrabble up the wall. His sneakers slip on the damp, greasy brick.  
  
A cold, hard hand lands on his neck. He’s plucked from the wall and dropped to the icky alley floor in a tangle of limbs and scrapes. Larry quickly gets Xander to his feet and pushes him against the wall.  
  
Up close, he looks way  _less_  stupid and way  _more_  scary.  
  
 _Not real, all a dream, pleaseohpleasenotreal!_  
  
“I happen to like beef a lot, kid, so you’re gonna go down real nice.” Larry chuckles, sending blood-breath into Xander’s face, which mingles freely with the requisite alley-stench. A digitally mastered nightmare, complete with surround-smell.  
  
“When was the last time you brushed, Larry?”  
  
It’s a shame Xander won’t live long enough to learn to control his stupid mouth, but in the riptide of pain that comes with Larry's mack-truck punch, he’s got no time for regrets, only retching. Larry lets him drop to the dirty ground just as he starts heaving up his dinner.   
  
 _Tastes the same coming up as it does going down. . . is that good or bad?_  
  
“Jesus, stop playing with the food, some of us are actually hungry!” Moe barks from right behind Larry. Damned vampire stealth.   
  
“Hold your water!” Xander’s picked up by his throat. The world swings so wildly he has to close his eyes or risk puking up what’s left of his stomach lining. Maybe in his next life, he won't be routinely tormented by  _Larrys_.  
  
“Whoa, whoa, guys! I’m all for vamp-power, but no snackin’ on that one. . . he’s mine.”  
  
 _Oh, yay, a new nightmare to compound the original one. . . only, that voice -_  
  
Larry snorts. “Don’t see your name on him, anywhere.”  
  
“Yeah, well, maybe you aren’t looking hard enough." That voice, the one that haunts Xander’s dreams less and less as time goes by, but never leaves entirely. It can't be real. Probably that vamp-strength punches had completely loosed his reason. . . but that voice? Could not be real.   
  
Larry gives Xander a shake. “Is that so?"   
  
"I shit you not."   
  
"You sayin' you called first dibs on burger-boy, here?"  
  
"Something like that."  
  
And uh-oh. When your nightmares are getting together to compare notes on you? Not good.  
  
Xander sucks a lungful of air past Larry's ungentle grip around his windpipe. "This is  _my_  nightmare and you assholes are  _so_  not invited, anymore," he croaks, bile-drool dripping from his lips. Larry gives him a purple-nurple that makes him yelp.  
  
 _The fact that these “nightmares” show no sign of fading, despite the introduction of bracing and quite painful stimuli does not argue well for this being anything other than objective reality._  
  
Xander’s brain has started speaking librarian-ese. And if the old think-box is functioning enough to ramble on using ten-dollar words, then. . . crap, this is probably  _real_.   
  
Crap.  
  
 _Quite. I dare say now might be an excellent time to open your eyes, Xander,_  the librarian-voice dryly suggests. He can’t help but obey.  
  
What he sees by the light o' the silvery moon - and by the light of the DMP's kitchen exit - is three vamps again. Moe, Larry and - a tall, dark-haired vamp dressed all in black and grey. A few steps closer and Xander can see that the clothes are different, but the grin. . . that grin is  _exactly_  the same.   
  
"Your consort, then?" Moe's words are more growls than words. "If you've claimed this kid then I'm a monkey's uncle, stranger. He sure as hell doesn't smell like yours.”  
  
 _That's 'cause I'm not. . . I'm so not. Please kill me, now._  Xander thinks, shuddering and trying to stop the heaves.  
  
“The particulars are none of your business.” The grin that accompanies this statement is hard, cold; crammed full of teeth. "All you need to know is you're damaging my property. Now, I'm asking you  _nicely_  to let him go, but I won't hesitate to fuck you both up, if I have to."  
  
"This'll be a good object lesson for ya: mark your property better.” Larry sounds smug. "Oh, and piss off."  
  
“Have it your way." The latecomer strolls toward them, relaxed, non-threatening. Until he lifts his arms away from the shadow of his body.  
  
 _Shit, are those wrist-mounted stakes?!_  
  
"Hey, let's not blow this outta proportion, huh? Maybe we could work something out?" Moe's face relaxes into it's human mask. Said mask is horsey, plain, not at all menacing. But so scarily  _dead_  in the dreamy, silver light cast by the moon. Xander can't see Larry, but knows he's still in gameface.   
  
Larry really  _is_  an idiot.  
  
But then his eyes are drawn to the face that's familiar - and not - and just as dead as Moe's, in the unforgiving moonlight.  
  
Xander knows it's not  _him_ , not really. But damned if it doesn't hurt like yesterday. Damned if it isn't like losing Jesse all. Over. Again, to see the still-beloved, human face morph into a demon's.   
  
Into it's  _true_  face.   
  
Xander flails and squirms in Larry's grip, kicking out, trying to hit a leg, a side - anything, rather than be fought over and devoured, like the last slice of pizza.   
  
"Stop squirming, junior, the grownups are talking." Larry shoves Xander back toward the wall - which he hits head first - and starts forward. Xander crumples to the alley floor.  
  
Bright pain and velvet darkness bloom in his sight, race inward till his field of vision collapses to a pinprick of moonlight, reflected off of golden eyes.  
  
Then there’s nothing.  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
 _Way to kill the mood, wanker. I think I’ll behead you, now,_  Spike thinks as he ‘rounds on the interloper, ready to dole out a piece of his mind.  
  
“You should learn to mind your own, eh, mate?” He stalks toward this vamp fashion victim, some odd-looking ponce in eye-searingly bright clothes with  _SoCal-duuuuuuuuude_  written all over him. If, that is, one ignores his extreme pallor.   
  
Spike’s completely willing to ignore the extreme pallor in favor of rearranging this joker’s limbs.  
  
“Holy shit.”  
  
This soft exhalation from behind Spike is enough to make him pause, a handful of garish-green t-shirt bunched in his fist.  
  
“I’m handling this, pet, no worries.” Spike doesn’t take his eyes off the vamp, who’s making absolutely no moves whatsoever, just calmly standing there, waiting. Looking. Past Spike.  
  
Right at Harris.   
  
“Eyes on the matter at hand, mate!” Spike snaps, giving The Dude a teeth-rattling shake. He doesn’t like the look on this vamp's face, not at all. It’s the look that’s on Spike’s own face when he watches Harris sleep: hungry and horny.  
  
“Jesus, it can’t be him -” Harris sounds calm and disbelieving, like a man who thinks he’s dreaming and expects at any moment to be woken up. “Can’t be him.”  
  
“You know this fella, Harris?” There’s no answer and people are starting to look their way. “Come on, love, spit it out.”  
  
When no answer’s forthcoming, Spike risks a glance over his shoulder. The boy's gone six shades of ashen-pale. His eyes are wide and happy and angry and - about a hundred other things.   
  
Spike’s never seen Harris look at anyone that way. Seeing such a look aimed at some tosser, in Chernobyl-bright colors, does nothing to improve Spike's suddenly bad mood.  
  
He lets go of the vamp’s shirt, aware of the curious eyes absorbing their little tableau. Too late to dust the vamp quickly, quietly. And Spike doubts he's out to  _hurt_  the boy. But the  _want_  coming off the blighter doesn't sit well with Spike at all. “Who  _are_  you, mate?”   
  
“Jesse?” Another breathy exhalation from behind Spike. The Dude is grinning, now. His gaze - which Spike has no doubt is being returned and with equal intensity - hasn’t left Harris once. Spike may as well not exist for either of them.  
  
“In the flesh, bro.” That annoying, smirky grin turns into a genuine smile as the vamp steps past Spike like he isn’t even there, arms open wide. “Gonna gimme a hug or just leave me hanging?”  
  
“Jesse.” Not a question, this time, but a relieved sigh.   
  
Spike turns to get a confirmation on what his bloody instinct is already telling him. Harris’s eyes are lit up like a pinball machine and he’s moving toward this “Jesse”. They meet each other halfway and stop, less than a foot apart, arms out yet not embracing.   
  
They look like utter wankers.  
  
“Jesus, Jess, I thought you - I dunno  _what_  I thought! Where’ve you - what’ve you - Christ,  _Jesse_!” Harris starts laughing, only it sounds a little like crying, too.   
  
“Xan.” The smile is as gone as the smirk and Jesse’s face is young, even younger than Harris’s. He closes the gap between them and slides his arms around Harris, leaning in to kiss him.  
  
Which isn’t what surprises Spike. No, not after catching a snootful of this -  _Jesse_ ’s scent. What surprises him is that Harris not only lets himself be kissed, but returns it eagerly.  
  
And if that heartfelt response isn’t enough to drive home the fact that Harris is into this newcomer, Spike finds himself drowning in a sea of pheromones, at least forty percent of which are the boy’s.   
  
One minute of watching the happy couple swallow each other’s faces and suddenly, drinking isn’t just  _an_  idea, but the  _only_  idea.  
  
“Oh, bugger,” Spike groans.   
  
And the night had been going so well. 


	4. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See chapter 1 for notes, spoilers, summary, etc.

**July, 1997**  
  
Xander's mind-deep in  _Cable_ , issue #117, when he hears the knock on the door.  
  
He rolls to his feet and opens the door to his room, pausing to toss the comic book onto his bed.  _Back in a minute, guys, don't save the future without me._  
  
"Who is it, mom?" Xander leans on the second-floor banister, trying to see down the front hall, half expecting it to be Willow. Who shouldn't be walking around alone after dark.  
  
"Hey, mom?" Xander calls when there's no answer. He starts down the stairs, a chill racing up his spine. "Is it Willow, or -"  
  
By the time he's halfway down the stairs, he can see all he needs to see. His mother is standing just beyond the safety of the front doorway, talking to a vampire.  
  
"Mom!" Xander's taking the stairs two at a time, full-tilt, until he, too, is out beyond the protective barrier of the doorway, at his mother's side. Ready to die defending her.   
  
She turns to Xander, looking mildly annoyed.   
  
"What? Your little friend, Jamie, dropped by to see you  _and_  spared the time and curtesy to speak with your mother - more than I can say for your  _other_  friends." A bleary-eyed reprimand that's kinda ironic, what with her being in danger of exsanguination.  
  
The question is: how to get her back inside quickly, without the use of words  _like_  exsanguination, vampire, undead fiend and especially  _Eeeeek! Run!_  
  
"Mom, he's not -"   
  
From the corner of his eyes, he can see the Jesse-vamp is shifting uncomfortably. "Xan, can we talk? Please?"   
  
Xander can just make out it's miserable expression. He still refuses to look at the thing full-on until he has to.  
  
"I'd really rather not." He manages to say very calmly. "Mom, would you please step inside?"  
  
"We should all go inside and I'll make some fruit punch and Chex Party Mix for you boys, hmm?" Jessica smiles maternally, but the lipstick on her teeth ruins the effect, somewhat. "So, Jamie, why don't you come on -"  
  
"MOM!" Xander interjects and pushes her behind him before she can finish inviting their death in for snacks. "Jamie can't hang tonight, he's got - plans. With his aunt. To go bowling. So he won't be staying long." Xander glances over his shoulder as he hustles her across the threshold, into safety. The Jesse-vamp hasn't made a single move toward them.  
  
"Oh, well, okay. . . if you're sure. . . ." she says as she steps inside the house and Xander nearly faints with relief.   
  
"I'm sure mom, really sure. Hey, isn't  _Married With Children_  on, now?"  
  
"You're right! Why can't your father be more like that Al Bundy? He's so sweet and funny." Xander's mother makes happy noises all the way down the hall and into the livingroom.  
  
 _Disaster averted. . . for now. And God, is my family life depressing._  
  
"Xander, you have to know I'm not here to hurt you." The vampire's voice is soft, but sends Xander scurrying back through the doorway, too.  
  
"Yeah, that'd be so 1996." Xander glares at the thing that used to be his best friend. It's like realizing Jesse's dead all over again.  
  
Xander leans on the lintel, looking the thing in it's eyes for the first time in nearly a year. He doesn't know what he expects to see in the anxious, unhappy eyes, but if it's villainy, he's disappointed.  
  
"If I wanted to hurt you, I coulda done it after I killed the those assholes, last Wednesday," it says, looking down at it's pale hands. "I don't have some big plan to kill or turn you.  
  
"Mind-fucking me before you kill me?" Xander rolls his eyes. "Always classy.  _Jamie_."  
  
"I saved your life! Brought you home, didn't even try to get invited in - hell, I coulda gotten your mom to invite me _just now_ , but I didn't!" The Jesse-vamp steps forward and rests it's palms on the mystical, no-vamps barrier, which ripples like the disturbed surface of a pond.  
  
“So, what? You want a medal?” Xander tries for contempt, but all the while thinks:  _brave words from behind the barrier. I’m da man._  
  
"I  _want_  you to be the one who invites me in, Xan. If and when." Jesse-vamp's face is so openly yearning and sad and -  
  
 _Lonely_ , Xander's heart supplies before he clamps down tight on it.  
  
“I’m not inviting you in, Jess. I will  _never_  invite you in.” Xander’s tone is beyond unwelcoming, now, and edging into hostile. Jesse-vamp looks down, it's hands dropping slowly away from the barrier.  
  
"You saved my life, Xan, even after I tried to kill you.” Even though it’s almost surely calculating, pitching it’s voice small and sad on purpose, that voice still cuts Xander into pieces. “You - you're the best friend I've ever had and I don't want you to hate me."  
  
"Thought a big-talkin' vamp like you was too cool to associate with a loser like me. Or are  _you_  just as big a loser dead as you were alive and the cooler vamps won't have anything to do with you?" Xander leans forward, closer to the barrier, but not past it. "Is that it?"  
  
"No." The Jesse-vamp looks up again and it's eyes are shiny. Xander feels a moment of concern for it; hates himself twice as much as he hates it.  
  
"I shoulda staked you when I had the chance, but I -" Xander laughs mirthlessly, helplessly filling his eyes with the sight of his dead best friend. "I mistook you for someone I used to know. Someone who's dead, now." Hurts to say that, to acknowledge the weakness that he still feels simmering within him. He bows his head and closes his eyes.  
  
 _Even if I wanted to pray for Jesse's soul, I wouldn't know how. . . ._  
  
"Please, Xander.  _I_  was the loser for doing what I did. . . saying what I said. I'll do  _whatever_  it takes to regain your trust, just tell me."   
  
Xander's startled into into looking, seeing; the vamp is watching him unblinkingly, it's dead, white face is stiller than Jesse's face had ever been.   
  
The smile Xander summons for it is gentle, almost forgiving. "Not staking you when the opportunity presents itself? Is a mistake I won't make twice."  
  
He slams the front door in the Jesse-vamp’s face before it can respond.  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
Xander is sure, now, that he knows how robots must feel.   
  
His feet propel him toward Jesse -  _Jesse!_  - without his say so, his traitor lips are saying things that his brain heartily disapproves of - not for the first time - and his arms, his bastard arms. . . they’re just  _all_  about the hugging and holding. It’s shameful, really.  
  
But, currently arc-welded to Jesse’s mouth - and opening enough to encourage some tongue-action - Xander feels his mouth is the biggest traitor of all. Easily on par with Benedict Arnold.  
  
And - yep, his ass has joined the choir of sedition after a possessive double squeeze from Jesse’s strong hands.  
  
 _Two years! It’s been two years! No matter how good it feels, he can’t just come back and kiss me and everything’s all alright! This isn’t some lame ass romance story! He can’t - oh, God, what am I doing? And in front of_ Spike?  
  
At the thought of Spike - or of Spike watching him kiss Jesse - Xander’s body goes into overdrive, warp nine-point-seven, at least. The already uncontrollable desire he’s feeling for Jesse is fanned into a big, all-consuming  _need_.  
  
“Oh, bugger.”  
  
Spike’s voice, coupled with Jesse’s touch sends some interesting signals to Xander’s naughty-fun zone and - and -  
  
 _I’m hard,_  Xander thinks, lost in the wastelands between disbelief and self-disgust.  _And kinda angry. . . he waltzes back into my life with the jokes and the lips and the naughty-hands and suddenly I’m mister-forgiving-guy-who-instantaneously-forgives? I think not!_  
  
He breaks the kiss quickly, panting and backing away a bit. The hazy, happy look on Jesse’s oft-wished for, long-missed face is enough to make him regret what he’s about to do, but damnit, he refuses to make  _this_  mistake twice. That way led to blood-loss and heart-loss, once upon a time.   
  
“If I’d have known you’d be this happy to see me, I woulda come back a long time ago.” Jesse’s voice is shaking and he leans in for another kiss, but Xander backs out of his arms.  
  
“You fucker.” And yeah, yeah, Xander's hauling back, hand curled into a fist. The confident, horny, blissed-out look on Jesse’s face is turning to confusion.  
  


*

  
  
Spike looks from Jesse, fallen flat on his arse, to Harris, who’s shaking his hand gingerly and glaring at his very surprised friend.  
  
“There’s your happy, asshole. Choke on it.”  
  
“Xander -” Jesse's not even trying to get up, just turning the full force of puppy-dog eyes on Harris.  
  
 _Oh, love, if you fall for that, you’re not nearly as smart as I don't give you credit for being. . . ._    
  
“Shut up, Jesse. It’s too-fucking-little, too-fucking-late.” That's the most forbidding tone Spike has ever heard the boy use and he heartily approves. It’s a surprisingly  _sexy_  voice, sends tingles to all the right places.   
  
The fact that the voice isn't aimed at Spike makes the tingle that much sweeter.  
  
Admittedly, though, after the marathon snogging - and groping - a left uppercut simply doesn’t follow.  
  
“Right. I’ll admit to being slightly confused,” Spike says, breaking the intense silence. Harris starts and looks up at him, as if just remembering there are other people in the world besides him and Jesse. Then he looks around, at the late evening foot-traffic that’s making a wide berth 'round the three of them.  
  
“Spike, I -” Harris doesn't so much as glance at Jesse. “He -”  
  
“Jesse,” Spike amends.   
  
“Yeah, Jesse." Cue the painful-looking, all-over blush. "We’re - we used to be friends.” Harris’s smile is limp, weary.  
  
“So I saw. But not anymore, I take it?” Spike feels he should get a gold statuette for the kind of casual he’s pretending to be.  
  
“No,” Harris says firmly. Jesse apparently isn’t giving up on the puppy-eyes any time soon, for all the good it’s doing him. “Not anymore.”  
  
“Well.” Spike isn’t a good enough actor to stop the grimly satisfied smile. “Good, then.”  
  
“Yeah.” Harris takes a few steps toward Spike, then a few more. “So. . . ?”  
  
Spike opens his mouth, but can’t think of anything to say. Harris’s blush gets even deeper and he looks down at his ratty shoes again. Jesse is still sitting on the ground, not looking at Harris or anyone now, just staring into space, looking confused and a little lost. Spike almost feels sorry for him.  
  
Almost. After all, the tosser’d had his hands all over Harris's arse and his tongue down Harris’s throat.  _Jesse_ 's lucky he didn’t find himself on the wrong end of a stake. Hell, he might, yet.  
  
No doubt Harris is will want to mope, then talk, then cry on Spike's shoulder. The truly pathetic part is that Spike fully intends to let him. The chip's turned him into a right ponce. He doesn't even have a bleeding soul to use as an excuse.  
  
“Wanna go get that drink, now?” Spike's half-smile doesn't make it the whole nine yards to leer.  
  
“Fuck, yeah.” Harris sighs, relieved, then sweeps an arm out. “Lay on, MacDuff.”  
  
Spike gives Harris a toothy smile and holds out his hand. For a moment, all Harris does is stare at it, as if it’s some sort of strange species of flora. Spike’s about to retract the offer and the hand when the boy takes it unsurely, then laces their fingers. The smile he gives Spike is brilliant.  
  
“Let’s go.”   
  
Harris practically drags Spike down the street. He never looks back, though Spike does, the one time.  
  
Jesse is gone.


	5. 5

**August, 1997**  
  
“Xander.”  
  
Walking home from The Bronze, Xander doesn’t even have to look around to know whose voice that is. He's just glad  _it_  had waited till he'd dropped Willow off before moving on to the one-sided convo stage of it's continued stalking.   
  
So he keeps walking, as usual, head down and hoping that it’ll finally go away and stop pretending to be someone it’s not.  
  
The cold hand that closes on his shoulder kills  _that_  bright and shiny dream.  
  
“Xan, come on, look at me.”  
  
“If you’re gonna kill me, kill me. If not, just - lemme go home in peace. It’s been -” Xander has to laugh at the absurdity of telling this  _thing_  his woes. “It’s been a long year.”  
  
“Tell me about it,” the vamp sighs, sliding an arm across Xander’s shoulders, easily keeping up with Xander’s brisk pace. Of course, it doesn’t have to worry about getting out of breath or leg cramps, does it?   
  
“Look, you wanna come back to the lair and hang? We could pick up some pizza, rent some movies. . . .”  
  
 _Oh, my God, I don’t_ believe _this!_  
  
“Stop it!” Xander shoves the vampire’s arm off his shoulders and turns to face it -  _him_. He looks so surprised, so miserable, so - so  _Jesse_ , which only makes Xander angrier. Unwisely so, but angrier, nonetheless. This - nonsense has been going on for weeks, now.  
  
“You’re a fucking monster, okay, so stop pretending that you’re human, that you care and that you’re not just aching to kill a  _loser_  like me where I stand, ’cause we both know better, right?” Xander’s screaming, now, rage flowing out of his mouth like a poisonous river. The demon is just standing there, looking stricken and hurt and Xander doesn’t see that, doesn’t  _want_  to see that.  
  
“Jesse is dead and you’re a demon - a  _parasite_  that took over his body, lied to us, to  _me_! Tried to kill me! Jesse woulda never done that, man, so you ain’t Jesse! Nothing you can say will  _make_  you Jesse!”  
  
The Jesse-vamp looks like he's about to cry and Xander feels like a jerk. He’s so very sorry he’d saved this thing, let it walk away, let it weasel off while Buffy was busy saving everyone’s lives.  
  
Sorry that the stake in his back pocket is going to stay there, as it has all the other times the Jesse-vamp has shown his lying face in the past few weeks.  
  
“So, you gonna kill me, now, or what?” Xander asks, even though the answer is always the same.  
  
Jesse shakes his head, a mute denial.   
  
Xander steps toward the vampire, who backs up. “Seemed real eager to do it last year, don’t see what’s stopping you now.”  
  
“I don’t wanna kill you, Xan, I never -”  
  
“So you were just trying to break that door down to give me and Buffy big, ol’ hugs, is that it?” They've been playing this game for too long and Xander's getting pretty tired of it. "You don't have a soul. You wouldn't know good, or love, or friendship if it bit you on the ass."  
  
“Damnit -” The Jesse-vamp runs a hand through his hair, looking less miserable and more aggravated. More like _Jesse_  than ever. “Will you just shut up, for once? Just for a minute? Scream at me later, but at least hear me out now!”  
  
“Yeah, sure, explain away the fact that you’re an evil, soulless shit that’s walking around wearing my best friend’s corpse -”   
  
Despite his harsh words, somewhere, deep down Xander really believed he’d been dealing with the same boy he’d gone to school with for the past ten years. But when the Jesse-vamp  _moves_ , pins Xander to the trunk of a nearby oak tree before Xander can even begin to gasp, reality comes crashing in like a pro-wrestler.  
  
“I said  _shut up_ , Xan.” Jesse-vamp is in full gameface, now, his voice little more than a growl with delusions of grammar.   
  
 _He weighs more dead than he ever did alive_ , Xander notes calmly as the Jesse-vamp flattens him against the tree; he’s suddenly afraid. Not of death - he’s lived in the ‘Dale far too long to fear death - but that Jesse’s demon might not let him stay dead.  
  
 _Keeping my mouth shut sounds like a plan, for now._  
  
Gameface melts away and Xander’s looking at his best friend again. The thing pretending to be his best friend.  
  
“Listen.” Jesse-vamp sighs and the fangs and ridges melt away, like they never were. “I’m not the same guy I was a year ago. Or even six months ago. I know who I am, now, Xander. I’m  _Jesse_. Stronger and faster and -”  
  
“Deader.”  _Way to keep your mouth shut, idiot!_  
  
Jesse-vamp just blinks and grins. “That, too. But still Jesse. You’re still my best friend. I never wanna hurt you, you know?”  
  
“We play on opposite teams, Jess, or didn’t you realize? I pal around with the Slayer, now.” Xander meant to sound proud of the fact, but he just sounds spiteful and petty, to his own ears.  
  
Jesse nods and for a moment, he looks lost and confused. Then his face hardens. “Damn it, it’s all  _her_  fault I’m dead, anyway! She brought all this  _X-Files_  shit to town with her!”  
  
“No she didn’t, and you know it. All the people, all our friends that’ve disappeared and died since, like, forever - Buffy didn’t bring that with her. She's putting a stop to it," Xander says, then quietly adds, "The real Jesse would understand that.”  
  
“Come on, man.” Jesse-vamps’s eyes are shifting from brown to gold and it's hands are squeezing Xander’s arms so hard, he’s going to have bruises in the morning. If he lives that long.  
  
“I did some stupid shit when I first got turned, but don’t - don’t hate me. I’m still your best friend. Don’t abandon me, man!”   
  
It’s the tears that make Xander do what he does next. (At least that’s what he'll tell himself when he wakes up the very next afternoon, covered in bruises and bites and minus two pints of blood.)   
  
Xander reaches up and caresses Jesse-vamp’s face tentatively. He immediately leans into the touch, his eyes closing. The skin under his fingers feels - well, Xander doesn’t know if it feels the  _same_ , he hadn’t been familiar with the way real-Jesse’s face felt. But the vampire's skin and tears feel soft, smooth and cool to the touch.  
  
Giles and Buffy never said vamps could cry.   
  
“Don’t cry, we - we didn’t abandon you, we - Giles and Buffy said -”  
  
“What the fuck do they know about it?” Jesse-vamp opens his eyes and they’re wet, angry, golden. “Have they ever been vampires?”  
  
Xander blushes. “No, but - “  
  
“I’m not gonna lie to you, Xan - I’ve done some things, hurt some people and I guess it was wrong, but -" Jesse shakes his head helplessly. "I don’t feel bad about it. And why should I? I wasn’t hurting anyone who matters. Not my folks or Will, or you.”  
  
“Jesus, Jess, it’s not that simple! You can’t just hurt people and not feel bad, it’s - it’s wrong and -” as Xander’s thumb gently brushes Jesse-vamp’s cheekbone, it starts to - purr, is the only word that seems to fit. “You can’t stay in Sunnydale and you can’t keep coming around! When Buffy gets back, she's gonna  _slay_  you!”   
  
“Not if she doesn’t know I’m still here, she won’t.” Jesse-vamp grins, the same wry, sly grin he's had since kindergarten, but the sense of playful mischief has been replaced by something darker.   
  
 _Or maybe the darkness is all that's left once the soul is gone. . . ._  
  
“Oh, no.” Xander leans his head back against the tree and closes his eyes wearily. "No-no-no, you're not Jesse, you're just a demon. A liar. Get away from me."  
  
“Xander, please, you gotta believe it’s me. I'm the same as I was before I got turned, only happier, better. . . colder, though.” Jesse laughs nervously, his chilly hand coming up to rest over Xander’s, trapping it. “Having no circulation or body heat’ll do that to you, I guess.”  
  
Xander laughs, too, even though he's sure he's going mad. “I’m sure you are. Please leave me the hell alone.”  
  
"Xander, I'm  _so cold_." As if to back up that statement, a cold whisper of breath ghosts across Xander’s palm. "And you're so  _warm_. . . ."   
  
Neither of them say anything for a few minutes and around them, the night grows slowly older. When Xander opens his eyes, Jesse’s giving him the weirdest look. His eyes are doing that flashing-thing, shifting between dark brown and gold; it’s almost mesmerizing.   
  
Almost. Xander closes his eyes, tries to clear his head and starts to move his hand away. But Jesse shakes his head slightly, pressing Xander’s hand to his cheek.  
  
“Don’t stop.”   
  
Xander shivers, swallows around the lump in his throat. “Jess -”  
  
“Come back to my lair.” Jesse turns his face to whisper against Xander’s palm, his lips and tongue a gentle, suggestive brush that makes Xander sigh.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
“Wanna talk about it?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
Spike frowns at his Stella for a minute before glancing at Harris - silent!Harris - again. “You sure?”  
  
The boy knocks back another shot. “Pretty sure.”  
  
“Right, then.”   
  
It's a slow night at Willy's, unfortunately. A few vamps, a couple of Chthonians - the non-violent, non-slimy kind - but nothing dangerous or even very distracting.   
  
Across from him, Harris, despite eight shots of Jagermeister, is remarkably un-drunk. Spike supposes the boy's inherited that Harris drinking-gene, after all.  
  
 _Thought he'd be all tears and snot and mewling. . . he's a surprise at every turn, tonight._    
  
“Why don’t you just admit it?” The boy's quietly amused voice is a bit of a startle, considering he hasn't strung together more than four syllables since they'd arrived.   
  
“How's 'at?”   
  
Harris starts laughing and Spike’s clearly missed something.   
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re curious. About me and Jess.”  
  
Spike already has a fair idea of what their relationship had been. But all that's ancient history and that's what matters. “Am I?”  
  
“Mmhm." Harris's bright, dark eyes are dancing with merriment and possibly tears. There's a briny scent in the air, but that could just be one of the Chthonian's Margaritas. "The curiosity’s been eatin’ at you but you’re too fucking stubborn to just ask and have done.”  
  
“Maybe you’re the one eager to tell.”  
  
"Like you don't want all the gory details." Harris snorts.  
  
"Enlighten me as to why I would even care about what passes for your sex-life, pillock." Spike snarks out of habit, though he's  _very_  interested in what passes for Harris's sex-life.   
  
"Enlightenment? Coming up." The boy's smile is sultry, a little bleary. Spike's about to suggest Harris lay off the hard stuff when a warm foot nudges his calf. Slides steadily upward along his inseam, till it reaches the semi he's been trying to ignore for the entire evening.  
  
Harris's smile is downright predatory. His eyes never leave Spike's as he strokes with his toes. Spike leans back in his rickety chair and grins; a bit of shifting in his chair to maximize the area of stroke-age and. . . yeah.  
  
Without breaking eye contact, he knows that every vamp eye in the place is on them, knows exactly what's going on.   
  
 _That's it, tossers, this one's mine, no snackin' allowed._  
  
And as much as Spike wants to unzip and let the boy show off this brilliant talent he seems to possess, it wouldn't be prudent. Not even in a dive like Willy's. Spike lifts his pelvis once, sharply, making sure his interest is unmistakable, before catching and stilling Harris's foot and pushing it away.  
  
"Easy on the goods, for now, pet," Spike murmurs to those pretty eyes, to those bloody  _amazing_  toes. "Just washed these jeans, didn't you? Plus, we've got ourselves an audience."  
  
The boys blushes and glances away. "Oh. God, this place is a pit."  
  
"Don't have to tell  _me_. But it's cheap. And. . . discreet."  
  
Harris grunts something that could be agreement, stares into his empty shot glass. "Can I tell you about Jess and me?"  
  
"'Course." After the aborted toe-job - Spike's been around the block countless times, but he's never received a  _toe-job_  - he'd listen to Harris read  _War and Peace._  
  
The boy sighs again, glancing at the bar to signal the waitress.   
  
“Nothing much  _to_  tell, really.”  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
“That is, indeed, so.” Harris's smile turns suspiciously bland. “He was my best friend. Mine and Willow’s. Since kindergarten. Just after Buffy came to town, about three years ago, he got turned by the Master. . . then he tried to kill us.”  
  
Spike frowns. One of the Master's get? Probably not childer, then, but still not a vamp to be taken lightly. “Tough break, that.”  
  
“Tell me about it. . . .” Harris falls silent as the waitress - a so-so looking vamp who must’ve been turned young - puts down his shot and a half full bottle of Jager. She collects the empties quickly, then makes tracks. Harris glares at the bottle morosely. “Friggin'  _Jesse_ , man.”  
  
Spike clears his throat. “You two were lovers, then?”  
  
The boy meets Spike’s eyes squarely. “Yeah. Only the one time, but. . . yes.”  
  
“Only once?" Spike lets the eyebrow speak for him, but adds, "Not exactly Don Juan, our boy?”   
  
“What? Oh, no - I mean, it wasn’t that. Hell, if anyone was the dud it was me. I’d never even kissed anyone, let alone -” Harris makes a vague gesture with his hand. His face is lit up like a Christmas tree.   
  
“Then why only once?”  _Why didn't he claim you and keep you when he had you, love? He didn't look_ that _stupid._  
  
“Why?” Harris's laugh is bitter. “Because I’m a loser. I’m the Zeppo. I’m a nobody, remarkably easy to walk away from, or didn’t you notice?”  
  
Spike winces. “I’m sure that’s not true -”  
  
“Spike, you’re a bad liar and an even worse comforter. And it’s no big, you know? I know my role, have for a long time. I’ve  _accepted_  it. But seeing him again, tonight, after two years was. . . .” the boy trails off.  
  
“Unexpected?” Spike offers. Harris laughs jaggedly.  
  
“Yeah. That, too.”


	6. 6

**August, 1997**  
  
  
Jesse had been stalking him almost since the night Buffy left town.  
  
Showing up wherever Xander went, insisting they talk or  _hang_. In all that time, he’s never once made Xander feel threatened, if one overlooks their initial meeting. But now, on Jesse's bed, in Jesse's  _lair_  - a borderline-cheap motel room just within the town limits - Xander’s instinct is clearing it's throat in preparation for a manly, but blood-curdling scream.  
  
“Shit, please tell me you’re not getting hungry?” he asks. Jesse's just been sitting in a rickety motel chair, watching Xander for the past ten minutes and smiling an eerily zen smile.   
  
Zen for a vampire, anyway.  
  
“Since I got turned I’m  _always_  hungry, always  _horny_ ,” Jesse sighs so ruefully, Xander’s torn between shuddering and laughing. A giggle slips out, desperate and high-pitched, but that clinches it. He’s laughing harder than he’s ever laughed before, doubling up and clutching his sides, hoping he doesn't yurg all over Jesse's rumpled bed.  
  
“So, basically you’re saying the Master bit you and t-turned you into a fifteen year old boy?” Xander's laughing harder than he's laughed since - since Buffy came to town.  
  
Jesse's still watching him, but smiling, so it's okay and not creepy anymore. “Gee, thanks for the empathy, man. I’m going through some massive angst here and you’re making with the funny. That’s touching in a not-at-all-touching sorta way.”  
  
Xander has to lean back against the headboard or topple right over. “Hey, you said it, not me!”  
  
Jesse’s still got that weird look in his eyes, but he’s still smiling, as well. “You’re beyond retarded. But at least you’re not scared of me anymore, right?”  
  
“I dunno. That depends on whether or not I’m starting to smell like a one course dinner, or not.” Xander’s just joking, still fighting off the last of the giggles, but Jesse’s smile turns predatory.  
  
“Let’s find out.” Jesse crosses the room and sits next to Xander so their legs are touching. He puts his hand on Xander’s shoulder and leans in close; so close, part of Xander’s over-taxed brain wonders if he’s about to be eaten, or maybe kissed.  
  
“Hey, no -” he begins, but the sentence ends in a yelp as cold lips and an even colder nose touch his neck. Jesse inhales so deeply, Xander's glad he'd remembered to take a shower that day.  
  
“Oh, jeez, you smell even better up close,” Jesse murmurs against Xander’s throat. “You smell like every dessert I’ve ever had or wanted to have. You smell like. . . .” Jesse inhales again and shivers. At some point, since the sniffing started, he'd begun slowly stroking Xander's arm as if gentling a skittish horse.  
  
“Uh, Jess, you’re wigging me out.” Is that wet flicker Jesse’s  _tongue_? You bet it is! Suddenly Xander’s shivering too, whether from fear or something else, he doesn’t know.  
  
 _Oh, God, was that a pre-bite lick, or a pre-naughty-fun lick? Which kind of lick would wig me out more?_  
  
And there will be no deep pondering of  _that_  particular question, ‘cause it’s  _so_  not up for debate.  
  
“You smell like fear, too.” The hand stroking Xander's arm is sliding around his waist and Jesse's cool, hard body is pressed against his side. The sniffing has turned into protracted nuzzling.  
  
“Well, you’re scaring me, Jess, so yeah. I guess I would smell kinda fear-y.” And  _boy_ , is he afraid. But not of being eaten.  
  
“Xan. . . .” Jesse's "breath" tickles and it sounds like he’s grinning. Then, oh, then his face is inches from Xander's. "Don't be afraid. I'd never hurt you, not now. . . not ever."  
  
"Wow! Okay!" Xander practically levitates in his haste to get off the  _bed_  and put some space between himself and Jesse.   
  
"Um, so, this is your  _lair_ , huh? Does it have room service and cable? Ooh, hey! A mirror!" Xander wanders over to the room's one, chipped dresser and leans on it tiredly. In the large, scuffed mirror, his eyes are wide and spooked.  
  
 _I'm pretty sure he was gonna kiss me? How sure am I?_ Belmont Stakes _sure._ Vegas odds _sure. Oh, crap. . . ._    
  
"Xander."  
  
In the mirror Xander can see the bed, empty, rumpled, with a slight dip in the center. Jesse. And there's nothing for it but to turn and face him.   
  
Yep, Xander's about to, any second, now.   
  
"There’s another scent under the fear, Xander.”  
  
Xander  _eeps_  at the chill whisper in his ear and the hands on his hips, pushing up his t-shirt just a bit. Soft, cool lips are on his nape, whispering - or kissing, if Xander's being honest with himself - due right, to his jawline.  
  
 _Honesty is extremely over-rated. I'm all for denial._  
  
“Another scent? Like wh-what? B.O., or - sweet, sprinkle surprise! Okay! Hungry  _and_  horny. I get that, now. I so get that, ‘cause your naughty-fun zone is pressed right against my - um, oh, wow -”  
  
“Xander, in full-on-babble mode? Very hot. . . speaking of, touching you is like standing in sunlight. You're so warm and bright. . . but hopefully non-lethal.” Even though Xander can't see Jesse's reflection, he knows Jesse's smile is full of teeth, his eyes full of gold.   
  
And he’s doing something that Xander might consider grinding if it wasn’t being done to him by his dead, male best friend.  
  
“Jess, in case you forgot, I - uh -" Oh, if only Xander could ignore the utter surrealness of Jesse's -  _dead Jesse's_  - hard-on. "We’re  _b-both_  guys!"   
  
"So?" Jesse is  _panting_  and his slow, easy grinding is getting faster, purposeful and intense.   
  
"And you're a vampire!" Which still doesn't explain why Xander's letting himself be dry-humped against a motel dresser. It certainly doesn't explain why his body is - oh, say it ain't so - matching Jesse's funscarygay pace. Unless -   
  
" _Hey_! Are you thralling me?!?”   
  
“I'm not thralling you, lamewad.” Jesse sounds like he's laughing.  
  
“Oh. . . what about Cordelia? Aren’t you having unrequited lust for her?”  
  
Jesse snorts and slides his hands under Xander’s t-shirt and up his torso, brushing his nipples. “Please. I’d like to think I’ve grown as a soulless fiend. Anyway, that shallow bitch is so last year.”  
  
Jesse's not in gameface, but Xander can feel the  _rippling_  on the back of his neck, like Jesse's fighting to stay human for him. (Only in his deepest, girliest subconscious will Xander ever admit that he's touched by the gesture.)  
  
“So, you got turned and got turned gay? That's, um, weird and - uh. . . stuff.” Why has talking become the Xan-man’s arch-nemesis? Ah, yes, the grinding and nipple-brushing - nipple- _pinching_.  
  
“I always thought you were cute. Just never had the balls to admit it.” One of Jesse's hands drifts down to Xander's fly, hesitates. "You wouldn't believe how many times I've jerked off while thinking about you."  
  
“Yeah, right. ‘Hello, I’m  _Xander_ , the Great and Sexless Wonder’! I'm no one's stroke-fantasy, Jess. Well, maybe Willow's, but I’m not even gonna go there.” Xander shudders.  
  
“ _I_  want you, Xan. Hear me? I  _want_  you.”   
  
“For dinner? Hey maybe you’re  _confusing_  horny with hungry, ever think of that and why am I trying to talk you into eating me in the non-sexual, devour-y kinda way ohjesusfuck!” There goes the zipper, and Jesse's knuckles brush Xander's erection -  _just when the hell had_ that _happened_? - as he slides it slowly down.  
  
 _Hands! Hands in naughty places! Principal Snyder in a speedo Principal Snyder in a speedo Principal Snyder in a -_  
  
Jesse's chin rests on Xander's shoulder. "I want  _you_." A whisper that tickles his earlobe just before sharpish, still-human teeth bite.  
  
Had Jesse's voice ever sounded like  _that_ , before? So dark and full of -  _need_? Certainly it'd never sounded that way about Xander.   
  
"Y-you do?" Xander opens his eyes only to see his own reflection, alone. His hair and shirt appear to be disheveling themselves. But he has an idea of where Jesse's eyes should be and looks steadily into them. "You really want me?"   
  
Then Jesse's turning him away from the mirror, kissing him softly and slowly, which is, like, the best possible answer.   
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
 _The world is shiny and pretty. And shiny, too._  
  
“No, it’s not, you’re just drunk, is all. Believe me, the world’ll seem much less shiny with your head in the loo, pet.”  
  
 _Is Spike reading my mind, or did I say that out loud?_  
  
“Bloody hell - of course you said it out loud, you pillock!” Spike grumbles and curses, but Xander finds himself distracted by the nice view he has of Spike's ass. A wonderful sight from far away, but up close, it's - wow.   
  
 _Spike has a great ass._  
  
“'Bout time you noticed, Harris.” There’s a laugh in Spike’s voice and that’s way better than the cursing.  
  
The world, shiny and pretty though it is, is moving oddly, making blood rush to Xander's head. Though, at least half of that feeling is due to Spike's ass. “Spike, how come we’re not at Willy’s anymore?”  
  
“You're really pissed, aren't you?" Spike sighs. "You passed out after shot fifteen, pet. Did a header right into the table. . . never heard a sound like that in all my unlife. What’s your skull made out of, anyway? Balsa wood?”  
  
“Your ass is soooooooo fucking awesome." He watches Spike's ass clench and release as the strong, muscular legs above them walk. Wait.  _Above_? "I dream about your ass.”  
  
“Really?” Spike doesn’t seem too displeased about that.  
  
“I dunno,” Xander admits. “But I’d like to, anyway. Hey, here’s a question: why am I upside down?”  
  
“Tossed you over my shoulder and left, didn’t I? I’d never live it down if anyone saw me carrying you in my  _arms_ like some dainty, little chit.”  
  
“Oh." Xander's arms are swaying above him - below him? - swaying like tree branches in a strong breeze. "Spike. . . would you sleep with me?”  
  
"Yeah." There’s silence, for a bit, and Xander spends it contemplating the Amazing Ass. “What, you mean right now?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing, never mind. . . say, Harris. . . you still in love with your old mate?”  
  
“Hunh?”  _Can an ass actually hypnotize? Are you hypnotizing me, Spike’s ass? Spike’s_ arse?  
  
“Harris! Stop talking to my arse and answer the bloody question!”  
  
“Alright, alright, Christ!” Xander feels very put upon. The world, which is mostly made up of Spike's hypnotic ass, is spinning. Xander thinks he might cry. Then he gets a brilliant idea.  
  
“Oi! No grabbin’ it, either! ‘M tryin’ to  _walk_!” There's a savage pinch to the back of Xander's thigh.  
  
"Ouch!" Above him, Spike's ass and legs and a sliver of pavement resume their somba-esque rhythm. "Where's your duster? Did you leave it at Willy's?"  
  
"God, no!" Spike sounds almost offended. "Willy'd sell his own mother for a wad of used chewing gum, never mind my duster. Carrying it on m' other arm. Don't want you pukin' down the back of it."  
  
"Oh. . . do you work out?”  
  
“I’m dead.” No matter what Spike's saying, it always sounds like he’s calling Xander a  _pillock_. It's no fair the English get to make up words whenever they want.   
  
“Would that be a no?”  
  
“That would be a no.”  
  
“Oh. . . well." Xander gives that some serious thought. "Some people just have naturally nice asses. I guess you’re one of them.”  
  
“Ta, love.” Spike  _does_  have feelings. And Xander would call the feeling that’s currently coloring Spike's voice: touched.   
  
But just in case he isn’t picking up on that, Spike smacks his ass soundly.  
  
“Yipe!”  
  
“Don’t complain. You know you liked that,” Spike says smugly.   
  
The shame of it is, Xander can’t even disagree. When had he turned into such a he-slut?   
  
 _Just smack my ass and I’ll follow you anywhere. . . maybe that’s why Jesse left me._  
  
"If  _that's_  why he left, he's a fool and a daft bugger," Spike eloquently opines. "All too rare to find a human that really likes the rough stuff, I'll tell ya."  
  
“I dunno.”  
  
“Bugger  _I dunno_ , I can smell the pheromones comin’ off you like stink off a Drellnar! Bet you’ve been  _waiting_  for some strong, take-charge kinda bloke to spank you proper.”  
  
“No - well, yeah. But I meant that I don’t know if I’m in love with Jesse, anymore. I don't know if I ever was. . . but he wanted me.” Xander sighs, which isn’t a good idea when you’re upside down over a guy's shoulder, as it leads to a near-puking.  
  
“If you throw up on me, I’ll kill you, chip bedamned,” Spike warns.  
  
“Not gonna throw up. . . ."  
  
"You'd better not."  
  
"He broke my heart, Spike. More than once.”  
  
“So I gathered.”   
  
"He said he'd never hurt me, never ever and then he went and did it anyway."  
  
An empathetic pat on Xander’s ass turns into a sustained stroke. "He's a wanker, pet."  
  
“He was my first and. . . I know guys aren’t supposed to get all sentimental about that kinda thing." They're going up steps. . . familiar steps. "But - all my friends are girls so sentimentality kinda rubbed off on me.”  
  
“Gospel truth, that. Not exactly a manly man, are you?”   
  
“Maybe  _that’s_  why he left," Xander tells the welcome mat, which is also familiar. "'Cause I’m just a dumb, ugly, girly, dumb loser-boy with stupid hair and tacky clothes and I talk too much.”  
  
“Don't say that, pet, you're not - well, you’re not ugly.” Spike stops walking. Xander hears the jingle of keys. “Been wantin’ to shag you since Angelus gave you to me.”  
  
“You have?” An open doorway with darkness spilling out and Spike is walking them through it.   
  
“Yeah, I have." An unlovely scent like cheap beer and stale cigarette smoke makes Xander wonder if they're back at Willy's. "He only used you to distract me - the bastard - because I’m a sucker for pretty brunets and he knows that."  
  
"Oh." Angel  _or_  Angelus, the guy's just a  _bastard_ , always exploiting people's weaknesses like a big, broody cave-vamp, and - "Wait - you think I'm pretty?"   
  
Another door creaks, a light switch is flicked and things take a sudden downward turn. "Well -"   
  
"Ohgodewww!  _Angel_  thought I was  _pretty_?" Spike seems to be clomping briskly down a narrow, poorly-lit flight of stairs. That does not help Xander's sudden nausea at all, but at least the clomping stops relatively soon.  
  
"Here we are!” Spike exclaims.  
  
“Where's here -?” then Xander’s world is turned topsy-turvy-er as he’s dumped, like a sack of potatoes, onto a saggy bed.   
  
When the room stops spinning enough for him to risk opening his eyes, he sees Spike - and Spike's three clones - staring down at him in concern.  
  
 _Ah, back at the Basement of Doom. . . splendid. And I gotta get up at five - shit what time is it? I hope I don't yark all over the bed. Why the hell is Jesse back in town? I touched Spike's non-no area with my foot! Why is the room spinning? How drunk am I? I_ am _gonna throw up, aren't I?_  
  
“Look a bit green around the gills, pet.” It’s cool that the clones  _tsk_  in sync, but also a tad creepy.  
  
“Nah, m'okay, just. . . needa. . . lie here a moment. . . re-group. . . re-strategize. . . .”  
  
“Alright, then. Think you’re gonna be heaving in the night?” The four Spikes are giving Xander very dubious looks.  
  
“No. . . can I ask you guys somethin'?”  
  
“Er. . . why not? Long as it isn’t about my arse.”  
  
Xander blushes. “Could you, um - one of you, anyway - sleep with me?”  
  
“Didn’t we cover this a little while ago?” The clones are reaching for their belts in perfect, four-part harmony, four leers lighting four, excruciatingly sexy faces. . . .   
  
A wonderful sight, but -  
  
“No! I mean sleep as in lay down with me and  _go to sleep_! No naughty-fun! I gotta flip burgers in a few hours,” Xander whines just as the four vamps are about to yanks down their pants. They turn four, disappointed pouts on him.   
  
Sexy-pout times four? Almost more than a Zeppo can bear.   
  
“Oh, fine. . . ." The clones seem disappointed, but tuck themselves away again, not that Xander had been staring, heavens, no! "Are you gonna act like a frightened virgin if you wake up and I’m in your bed?”  
  
“No!" Xander feels vaguely insulted. He closes his eyes and rolls onto his side, shutting out four more dubious frowns. "Probably not.”   
  
(Unless he forgets about asking Spike to join him, but they’ll cross that boat when they sail to it. Right now, all Xander wants to do is sleep.  
  
Just not by himself.)  
  
“Right. . . oi, Harris? Sometimes, I like to sleep in the altogether -”  
  
“Spike!" Xander refuses to open his eyes again. Lord only knows what the Big Bad Quadruplets are doing  _now_.  
  
“Fine! I’ll sleep in m’ kit." Spike's sulky voice, followed by a muffled zipping-up sound. Xander sighs, tells himself he's not at all regretful. "Happy?”  
  
“Deliriously. Just get in bed and be quiet. I gotta be up in -” Xander’s watch is all blurry and flesh-toned. . . he can’t even read it, what with those little dark hairs growing out of it.  
  
“Three hours and twenty-seven minutes,” Spike says helpfully.  
  
“Oh, fuck me.” Xander groans as the bed dips under Spike’s weight. A second later, a room temperature body is tucked up behind his own, one arm thrown over his waist.  
  
“In the morning, love. In the morning,” Spike sighs, his cool breath tickling the back of Xander’s neck.   
  
Before he can respond, darkness drops on him, like an Acme anvil.


	7. 7

August, 1997

"I am so sorry, Jess."

"Xan -" Jesse leans up on one elbow to look down into Xander's eyes. "Will you quit apologizing?"

Xander has never been so mortified in his life. Not even that time when he was naked in front of the whole class. No, that was a wonderful happy dream, full of warm, fuzzy lurve and sunflowers and fluffy bunnies. 

This? This is embarrassment hell.

"I should be dragged out into the street and shot," Xander groans, trying his damnedest to pretend they're both not bare-ass naked. Pretending not to see that Jesse's eyes devour him in a way that's carnal in every sense of the word. "You, like, looked at me and kablooey! Xander does his impression of Old Faithful!"

"Come on, don't be like that." Jesse leans over and licks Xander's chest once, delicately. Not the rasping, purposeful licks of a few minutes ago, but a lazy, possessive tongue-tease. "You were fucking amazing! The look on your face was -" 

Xander turns even redder, but feels less humiliated than he did just a minute ago. Maybe it's the purring. Xander's fairly sure Jesse doesn't even realize he's doing it, but it's not easy being a nervous, embarrassed wreck when your pet vamp makes happy-kitten noises after giving the best hand-job ever.

Jesse's teeth close on Xander's right nipple very gently. "And the best part," nibble. "The absolute best part," bite. "Was licking you clean." A sharp tug by sharper teeth that still aren't - quite - fangs. 

Xander nearly jumps out of his skin when Jesse's cock pokes him the thigh. 

"Uh, Jess?"

"Can't talk; nibbling."

Xander evades Jesse's next bite by shifting a little and Jesse makes the exact same whiny sound he's been making for at least as long as they’ve known each other. He sits up wearing his best serious-face but Xander’s not fooled. 

"Okay, what?"

"You didn't come."

Jesse grins, takes Xander's hand and kisses it. "And?"

"And? Are you waiting for an engraved invitation?"

"Actually, I'm waiting for this -" Jesse pulls Xander's hand slowly down his body, following the sparse trail of dark hair. Jesse’s eyes never leave his and the serious-face is no longer a put-on.

I know where this is headed. . . . Xander shivers.

“Jess. . . I’ve never actually touched another guy's - I never even kissed anyone, before you.” Xander’s mouth is once again doing that thing, where it runs away with his brain. His eyes dart back and forth between his hand in Jesse's and Jesse's hungry eyes. “Except for Willow, but that was -”

“Back in first grade. I remember. I was the one who dared you guys to kiss.” The muscles under Xander's fingers spaz and jump.

Held in a firm, grip, Xander's hand is placed on Jesse's cock. He's not sure if it's Jesse prompting him or if he's finally showing some initiative when his fingers close around the long, cool flesh. 

And stay that way for a brief eternity, though Xander’s glaring at his stupid hand, willing it to do something!

"You know, I'm pretty sure it doesn't bite, so feel free to pet it." When Xander looks up, Jesse's lips are twitching like he wants to laugh.

"I'd tell you to blow me, wiseass, but I don't think that statement carries quite the same impact it used to," Xander sighs. Jesse squeezes his hand gently, then lets go. 

"Just touch me however you want - or however you touch yourself. I promise, you can't go wrong."

Oh, I'm sure if there's a wrong way to stroke off a horny, teenage guy, I'll find it. . . .

One motionless minute later:

"Oh, God, I can't feel my hand!"

"Xan -" Jesse flops back on the bed, laughing. "Don't over-think this, just - start with a slow, up-and-down motion."

"Up and down, that I can do, yeah." Xander sounds more like he's trying to convince himself than stating a fact.

Okay, I'm moving my hand up. . . and he's not screaming in pain or retching in disgust, so let's move down, now. . . his skin is so soft and cool. If he's dead, how can he even get hard? I'm pretty sure circulation should factor in. . . I think. Note to self: stop napping in biology class. Hey, I'm upping and downing like a pro! I am so good at this, I am an up and down MASTER! 

I wonder what'd happen if I -

"Holy shit!" Jesse's whole body shakes like a mini-earthquake and his eyes squinch shut as Xander brushes his thumb across the tip of his cock. 

"Was that not good?" Xander may just have to commit ritual suicide with a spork if it wasn't, but at least it’ll be a slow and agonizing end to the humiliation.

"Jesus, you're kidding, right?" Jesse pulls Xander down next to him and straddles him. "I just nearly did a Xander, and shot off all over the both of us."

"Oh, haha." Xander's saved the indignity of yet another blush when Jesse kisses him.

This is the way it should've been, this is what I've been missing. . . How is it that I could want something this badly and not even know it till now? 

"Hey," Jesse whispers on Xander's lips, licking them, sucking on the lower one. "I never told you what that other scent was."

"Buh?" Talking bad. Thinking bad. Kissing good.

"The other scent, under the fear."

Xander makes himself think, then groans. "Seriously hoping it isn't b.o."

Jesse chuckles, "Nuh-uh, not b.o. . . the other scent was mine." Jesse's eyes flash a hungry, possessive gold and then there's throat-nuzzling. "All mine."

"I smell like you?" Xander's brow furrows. "Okay. That makes the sense that's not."

"No, you don't smell like me - well, actually you do, now. But I meant. . . you smell like mine. My own." Sharp teeth nip Xander's jugular and he shudders, bucking up into Jesse's body. 

"Jess. . . ." 

"Do you wanna? Be mine? Like, forever, I mean?" 

"Yes, please, yes." For a moment, Xander's doesn't really care what, exactly, he's saying yes to, but he knows he'd say anything to make this last. To make these teases and touches, this feeling of being wanted go on forever.

Forever. Oh. . . .

Xander twines his fingers in Jesse's hair and pulls his head up till they're looking into each other's eyes. He smiles into eyes that, possessed or not, have the power to utterly devastate him.

"Yes, Jesse."

"Xander -" Jesse takes Xander's hand, pulling it to his face, leaning into the now automatic caress. "God, do you even get what you're saying yes to?"

"Not entirely," Xander murmurs. A small frown appears as thoughts of Buffy and Willow and slayage come to mind. "But I think I'd like to find out. . . if you really want me, I mean."

At some point, Jesse'd slipped into gameface, but Xander hadn't noticed. Human-face, vamp-face, it was all Jesse. "I've always wanted you, Xander. I always will."

Xander reaches up to touch Jesse’s face; his hand is shaking like he’s got some kind of palsy and then - he’s touching a cheek that feels softer and less stubble-y than his own. Up to brow ridges that are prominent, well-defined under Jesse’s shaggy, dark hair, the same color as Xander’s own shaggy, dark hair.

Much faster than his slow, human eyes can follow, Jesse's pushing Xander's legs up and out.

"Keep 'em like that," he growls softly. Eyes as big as saucers, Xander nods and places his hands behind his legs to hold them in place.

"Good boy." Jesse watches him for what seems like forever, eyes roving everywhere, giving nothing away. Xander starts feeling more than a little uncomfortable.

"Um, Jess?"

Dark, oddly patient eyes focus on Xander's mouth.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking. . . and when I'm done, I'm gonna fuck you." When those eyes meet Xander's, they're hungrier than ever. "While I'm fucking you, I'm gonna turn you."

"Oh." I'll take: Phrases No One Has Ever Said To Xander, for five hundred, Alex! "Ohh-kay." 

"Wasn't asking your permission." 

That hint - hint? Hah! - of something dark in Jesse's voice and eyes and face should be scaring the ever-loving spam out of Xander but it's doing quite the opposite. If there's a dividing line between lust and blood-lust, Jesse's clearly do-si-do'd across it.

That I find this disturbing new development exciting and hot proves that I've clearly do-si-do'd across the dividing line between sane and insane.

And Jesse's closer, suddenly so close, lips pressing lips, tongue seeking tongue, teeth clashing. Jesse maneuvers Xander's legs up higher, over his shoulders. Almost immediately, something blunt and hard nudges Xander's perineum.

The term split like a cord of wood suddenly pops into Xander’s frightened mind. If ever there was a time to call a time-out! this is it.

"Jess -” he’s a persistent kisser, that’s for sure. “Jess, wait - you said you'd never hurt me." Xander feels like a raging virgin for whimpering, much less whimpering that, for looking into Jesse’s eyes and asking for - Xander doesn’t know what, a painkiller? A shrink-ray? - but Jesse feels huge. 

“You’re really big and I’m really. . . virgin-y.” Xander blushes. “You see the problem, right?”

There’s no answer, but more kisses and a few scary moments when Xander would swear Jesse's about to skewer him despite his previous promises. Then: "I don’t wanna hurt you. . . I just forgot."

"What?" 

A small sigh. "How fragile you still are. . . how human."

"Is that - bad?"

Jesse smiles and in spite of the smile's darkness - maybe because of it - it's the most beautiful smile Xander's ever seen.

"Actually, that's very, very good." Jesse lays two fingers on Xander's lips. When Xander's lips part, Jesse slides his fingers in, letting Xander's tongue tickle and wet them before easing them out again. 

"You're gonna feel so hot around me." Jesse's fingers brush Xander's left nipple, navel, the tip of his cock. "Hot and tight and perfect." 

Xander's still shivering from the previous touches when a wet finger brushes his entrance once, twice, three times - which feels freakin’ fantastic - before pushing gently inward with no success. 

"Just relax." Xander's eyes flutter shut as Jesse pushes a little harder, slowly, until Xander relaxes and the tight ring of muscle releases. Jesse’s finger slides right in, cold and wet and - strange.

"Oh." That's all Xander can think to say. He feels full, very unpleasantly so. He's resisting the urge to squirm away from the intrusion, from Jesse. 

“Xander.” Jesse is panting again. “Xan?”

When Xander opens his eyes, Jesse’s are right over his own and he realizes something. Jesse in gameface just isn’t scary, anymore. Not when he looks so nervous and excited and so damn Jesse.

"Trust me?"

Xander nods, though he wants to shove Jesse out of him and away from him. 

"Okay, I need you to relax a little more for me. I’m gonna make this so good for you." Jesse's voice is so soft and sure and smooth, Xander's starting to think words like thralling and hypnotizing. "But you have to relax or it'll hurt."

Apparently there's nothing else for it but to relax, so he tries, as hard as he can. If Jesse was out to hurt him or - or rape him, it would've happened already.

"You're so good, Xan, so beautiful, can't wait to fuck you." Jesse keeps up a steady litany of praise and the finger in Xander is joined by another. Together, they push in deeper, make scissoring motions that tingle-burn, but aren't quite painful. 

Then Jesse does something with his fingers and -

Oh. My. God!

When the white noise around Xander's brain recedes, he opens his eyes to see Jesse smirking. "That'd be your prostate.” 

"Definitely no more napping in biology class, nossir! From now on it's studying and applying myself and hard work. Mrs. Cassini is right, science is my friend -"

Jesse’s fingers touch that place, that glorious place inside, while his other hand grabs Xander’s cock in a kung-fu grip. 

White noise times ten. 

"Xan?" 

“Guh?” A witty response, if one factors in the extenuating circumstances.

“Shut up.” Jesse leans closer, to whisper on Xander’s lips.

Then they're kissing again. Xander's mouth obligingly opens and Jesse’s tongue slips in, cool, coppery and wet and his fingers are a tag team of naughty-touching that’s making Xander’s mental tabula extremely rasa.

And it's not going to stop here. Jesse's mouth and hands and eyes have been telling him so all evening - for the past several weeks, in fact. Xander understands, now. 

Jesse wants him. In a way that actually is unholy, but wants him, nonetheless. Wants to keep him forever. 

As scared as Xander is, as bad an idea as this whole night has been and is going to be, he is sure of one thing:

Ya gotta go where you're wanted.

 

June, 2000

Hungover.

Hurts.

Can't move. 

Someone holding him so tight, he can barely breathe.

Something hard and cool pressing against his ass.

"What. The. Hell?" Voice like broken glass, mouth like a barroom floor.

"Sleep well, nummy?" 

Deep, amused, aroused voice right in Xander's ear. So low it doesn't disturb the all-drum band practicing inside his skull.

Last night comes back with the velocity and mass of Jupiter.

"Shit. Oh, shit." 

"Language, language, nummy." Is Spike purring? "Got better uses for that dirty mouth of yours than talkin', me."

Yep. There's purring. And humping. 

Spike is humping him like a large, dead dog.

"Spike. . . hangover. . . ." Xander's own groan is like daggers in his brain.

"And? Not like I'm askin' you to do anything other than lie here and take it like a pretty, little nummy tre -" 

Xander doesn't know where he finds the strength, but shoving Spike out of bed is the noblest and best thing he's ever done. Ever will do. And even though the thud!, and flood of British cuss-words does nothing for his head, he feels inexplicably better.

A second later, Xander's sound asleep, beyond Spike's protests and his own apocalyptic hangover.

*

 

Glaring up at Harris from the basement floor does little to wake the boy up again, but it does get Spike all het up.

Fuck or fight? Fuck or fight? Or. . . .

A solo wank in the shower -?

He sighs and glances down at his cock.

"Well, Spike, Jr. . . guess it’s just you, me and m’ good right hand. Again. Harris’s loss, eh?”

Spike's sure the look of utter contempt Spike Jr. gives him is all in his mind.

Almost totally sure.


	8. 8

**August, 1997**  
  
 _It hurts, but it’s. . . the good kind of pain._  
  
Xander has heard people say this and thought,  _Good pain? Yeah, right, don’t bullshit a bullshitter, man. Ain’t no such animal._  
  
But now, he knows differently.   
  
As Jesse grips his hips and slides slowly into him for the first time, filling him - it really  _does_  feel like being split in two - Xander whimpers, buries his face in the pillow because it hurts so damn good. It’s both the best and worst feeling he’s ever experienced.   
  
“Jess, Jess. . . .” Xander’s moans are muffled; he’s squirming and twisting, trying to get further from and closer to the cool body that’s soothing and invading him simultaneously. The pillow under his face is wet from tears or sweat or both.  
  
“Trust me, baby, please relax. . . .” Jesse strokes Xander’s back and sides, crooning reassurances that must work for some part of Xander’s brain, because suddenly, his body  _relaxes_ , every tight and clenched muscle in his body _trusts_  Jesse.   
  
Jesse immediately yanks Xander’s hips back.   
  
That long, wavering cry - voiced as Jesse slides the last few centimeters home - must be Xander’s because it sure doesn’t sound like Jesse, nossir, not at all. For a forever-ish moment, neither of them move. In his mind’s eye, Xander can see Jesse, eyes open, grinning around a mouthful of sharp, lethal-looking fangs: a statue of himself, cast in the palest marble. And himself, arching up under Jesse, eyes squinched shut, mouth open.  
  
Then the moment’s finished, forgotten and Xander’s got a faceful of pillow and Jesse’s panting cool, dry puff of air against his cheek, dry. His body is like ice cubes on Xander’s over-heated, sensitized skin.  
  
“Jeeee _zzzus_.” One long, slow exhalation as Jesse levers himself up off of Xander and pulls out almost completely. “Never felt anything like this. Like  _you_.”  
  
“Whuh?” Xander’s mouth is still running on auto. It must be, since his logic circuits have been fried. “Vampires. . . supposed to be all. . . .” Okay, the logic circuits work enough to realize the word  _slutty_  wouldn’t be very diplomatic.  
  
“All what? Slutty?” Agonizingly slow thrust and equally agonizing pulling out. “Yeah, we are. . . but I was low-vamp on the Aurelius totem pole, so I’ve never topped anyone before. . . .” There’s a shudder so strong it shakes them both, but Xander’s not sure which of them is responsible for it.   
  
On another front, the cheap motel sheet bunched up under Xander isn’t exactly the warm hand of friendship, but anything short of a swift kick to the crotch would be pure torture. The good kind, of course.  
  
“Not hurtin’ ya, am I?” Jesse sounds smug but Xander isn’t about to call him on it.  
  
“Yeah, yeah. . . hurt me some more. . . .”   
  
“Yes, sir, Xander, sir!”  
  
Yup, it’s the  _really_  good kind of pain and Xander’s starting to get that, now.   
  
He forces his left hand to stop clutching at the sheets and tries to get it under him, driven by horny, teenage instinct. But before he can even figure out how he’s going to get his hand between his body and the bed, Jesse’s grabbing it and Xander’s right hand.   
  
Which he then places on the top of the headboard, squeezing once, so Xander knows to hold on.  
  
And that’s all the warning Jesse gives him before the rhythm changes to slow, shallow withdrawals followed by fast, hard, deep thrusts that make Xander’s eyes water, make him clutch the the damn headboard, now, for dear life. The pain is different, now. It’s - more of a burn that’s actually more of a tingle. When Xander opens his eyes the motel room is a blur of brights and darks.  
  
 _Like that scene in_ Spaceballs _. . . we’ve hit_ ludicrous speed!</i>  
  
Suddenly, Xander’s giggling, trying his best to hide it - practically smothering himself in the pillow trying hide it - forgetting that of all people, Jesse’s in a unique position feel an attack of the giggles.  
  
“What?” Jesse sounds uncertain and in that moment, his lack of soul completely ceases to matter. This is  _Jesse_.  
  
“Nothing, I -” Xander’s body is suddenly shaking and ringing like it’s a bell and Jesse’s cock is the big - clapper-thingy, like in the  _Hunchback of Notre Dame_. There’s a slightly ominous groaning sound coming from the bed and the headboard. “Dothatagainonlyharder!”  
  
Jesse does it again - hits the happyfunspot dead on, like a runaway train - and wild colors explode on the backs of Xander’s eyelids.  
  
 _We’ve passed ludicrous speed and gone plaid!!!_  
  
Xander is officially off to the races; his giggles are turning into outright laughter.  
  
“What the hell are you laughing at?”   
  
“ _Nothing_!” Xander can’t stop gasping and laughing.   
  
“Xan -” Even though Jesse sounds a little offended now - and Xander  _knows_  he’s making the pouty-face - his hips are snapping forward fast and loose, in perfect 3/4 time. “Not to come off as extremely insecure, but - please don’t have laugh-attacks while I fuck you.”  
  
“Not you. . . it’s me. Sorry. . . .” Xander’s in tears, now. Every time Jesse thrusts, it’s an entirely new height of lurvey-goodness, but - the laughing fit is worse than ever.   
  
 _May the Schwartz be with yooooooooooooo_. . . .  
  
The laughter’s kinda painful, now - another good pain - but the sounds Jesse’s making don’t sound like he’s in anything like pain.  
  
“Xander, when you laugh, your body  _moves_  around me like - fuck, you  _have_  to stop laughing or I’m not gonna last much longer.”   
  
It’s the strain in Jesse’s voice that gives Xander some control and swallows the last of the chuckles, guffaws and snorts that want to escape on every breath he takes. Once he focuses on how Jesse feels in him - hard, thick, amazing - and the frenzied messages his prostate is telegraphing to his brain - moremoremoremoregodmorenowmore - the urge to laugh is gone.  
  
But what’s this?  _Jesse_ -babble?   
  
“. . . so warm and tight and - oh, fuck. . . .”  
  
“Jesse!”   
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Shut up!” Talk like that would only make them both pull a  _Xander_.   
  
Jesse’s wonderfully cool chest covers Xander’s back, his chin rests on Xander’s shoulder. “Make me.”  
  
“Okay. I love you, Jess. More than anyone in the world.”  _Except maybe Willow, but - let’s not think about Willow, just now._  
  
Another moment when the whole world seems to go still. Xander can feel Jesse in him, but can’t feel his own heartbeat.  
  
“I love you, too, Xander. Forever.”  
  
In this moment Xander realizes there’s a better-than-average chance that everything that makes him  _Xander_  will die tonight; the kind of dying that doesn’t involve a wardrobe by Kenneth Cole and bloody orgies.   
  
But for this now, he’s still alive and Jesse’s darkness  _wants_  him.  _Xander_. Means to have him in every conceivable way - and in a few ways that probably aren’t so conceivable to someone who still has a soul - and keep him ever after.   
  
Xander imagines the hungry grin and predatory darkness peeking out of bright, gold-colored eyes, and smiles. “Do it, Jess. Turn me.”   
  
Jesse’s in gameface again, nuzzling Xander’s neck. The nuzzling turns into kissing turns into sucking turns sharp, sudden pain, bright and sharp as a switchblade.   
  
Jesse’s driving into him, now, no rhythm, no rhyme, no tenderness. He misses Xander’s prostate as often as he hits it but he’s moving so fast all the hits have merged into constant, screaming bliss and the misses just don’t matter. Blood pounds in his ears and rushes through his veins, hot like a fever, flowing out of him and into Jesse. Instead of white noise and white light, there’s only darkness, filled with the sound of his own slowing heartbeat.   
  
Coming is painful, gut-wrenchingly so. It electrifies him, sweeps through Xander like a wildfire until he teeters on the edge of consciousness:  
  
 _If I wake up after this, the only pain I’ll_ ever _feel will be the good kind.  
  
So. . . let there be dark. . . and let it swallow me whole._  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
The next thing Xander knows about wakefulness is his own blood-curdling screams.  
  
Spike’s voice rumbles in his ear, low and amused. “Take it easy, pet, just water, innit?”  
  
Which is easy for Spike to say, because a) he’s already dead, so cold water don’t do jack to his non-existent central nervous system or unbeating heart and b) that dead, about to be deader, rat bastard is the reason Xander’s flailing around his tiny shower, trying to escape the powerful spray of cold water.  
  
“You are one dead fucking pile of fucking ash when I get a fucking stake!” Xander promises, then nearly falls out of the shower. Spike grabs his arms, hauls him back in - saving Xander a fractured skull and some broken bones - and pulls him close.  
  
“Can’t kill me now, just saved your pretty arse, didn’t I?” Spike’s grin as he turns down the cold water is pure  _evil_ and the sexiest thing Xander has ever seen.  
  
“Since you were the one trying to kill me, I think that cancels out your so-called good deed, Spike!” Though it’s tough to to stay mad under the quickly warming water and against the quickly warming vampire.   
  
Which said vampire is counting on, of course.  
  
“Rat bastard,” Xander mutters, slightly disgusted with himself. Spike just holds him under the warm spray, swaying gently, his eyes never leaving Xander’s. Both of them are hard and getting harder.  
  
When Spike chuckles and it’s throaty, sexy, does  _things_  to Xander’s lower half. And  _things_  should be the furthest thing from Xander’s mind, considering the way his head is about to start pounding.   
  
Naughty fun should  _not_  be a priority, at this time. . . .  
  
Spike’s hands are sliding from Xander’s hips, to his ass, the same kind of possessive hold Jesse’d had the night before, only Xander’s sooooo not gonna think about that, now. Not when Spike’s body is flush against his and Spike’s cock is hard against is own.  
  
“Oh, Jesus,” Xander exhales, letting his head rest against the tile. Spike, of course, takes that opportunity to dart in and mouth Xander’s neck.  
  
“Been waiting a long time, Nummy. I want you  _right now_.”  
  
“Spike -” Xander’s squirming under Spike’s solid body, trying to thrust or shimmy or  _something_  - friction’s the name of  _this_  game - anything to have more of the hot-cold-burn-tingle that Spike’s cock touching his own creates.   
  
But Spike isn’t moving, except for trying to give Xander a record number of hickies. He’s not letting Xander move much, either.  
  
“Tried to wake you up before, but you were feelin’ poorly. Now, however. . . you seem to be in fighting trim.” Spike’s face is suddenly a few inches in front of Xander’s own. When Spike doesn’t move any closer, Xander closes the gap between them almost desperately.  
  
Spike’s lips are warmer than he would’ve expected, but that could just be from the water. And he’s a considerate sort of kisser, the kind of kisser Xander would’ve never said  _Spike_  could be. He’s not all wet, hot, slippery tongue trying to count Xander’s back teeth -  
  
Xander realizes he’s going to have to be the one to french-up this kiss.   
  
He tentatively runs the tip of his tongue across Spike’s bottom lip and Spike shivers, opening his mouth with a moan. Xander’s tongue darts in, seeking more of what Spike’s lips had only hinted at, more of that  _taste_ : whiskey, smoke and blood. Three tastes that separately, don’t appeal at all to Xander, but when combined and in Spike’s mouth, are positively addictive.  
  
Spike moans again and Xander holds him even closer. It’s as if there’s some beast inside, laying dormant for all his life - or maybe just since sophomore year - and that soft moan wakes it up, brings it roaring out.  
  
He reverses their positions, pins Spike to the wall just under the showerhead and  _kisses_  him, counts his back teeth, plays some tonsil-hockey then just sucks face for a change of pace.  
  
His lower half has other ideas, like thrusting into the groove between Spike’s dick and his hip, feeling Spike do the same. Each moan or swear muttered against Xander’s lips increases the urgency of his hips.  
  
Though coming seems like a foregone conclusion - the best and final aria in very naughty opera - Xander’s body shivers and shakes, but he doesn’t come. His body’s reached a bright, fast, plateau of a fever-pitch that’s all but killing him.  
  
Spike’s hands clench tight on his ass for a moment and then Spike’s pushing two impossibly large fingers into him, before Xander can tense up and cause them both undeserved pain.   
  
“Yeah, Spike. Yeah, please, please. . . .” Xander’s closer, now, so damn  _close_. But as badly as he wants to come, he’s afraid; afraid that when he does, he’ll fly apart, bits of quivering Zeppo-flesh landing all over the place. Some bicep here, an eyelid there, just pieces everywhere.   
  
Not even Spike would be able to put him back together if that happened.  
  
“I’ve got you, pet, I’ve got you. . .  _relax_ ,” Spike’s whispering as Xander writhes almost mindlessly - frustratedly - against him. “I’ll take care of you, I promise. I’ll make you feel so bloody  _good_.”  
  
That full-body shiver? About ninety-eight percent creepy deja vu.  
  
Then Spike is nudging Xander’s legs apart with his feet, his fingers scissoring and pushing in deeper. The pain and discomfort is more than leavened by the knowledge that these are  _Spike_  fingers stretching him,  _Spike’s_  body he’s grinding against.  
  
He doesn’t have the words, the presence of mind to say what more he needs to finish this, is afraid he’ll be left trembling on the edge  _forever_. . . .  
  
Then Spike’s fingers ram forward so hard, Xander gasps. The gasp turns into a shout when Spike’s fingers hit  _that place_  - the one they probably  _hadn’t_  mentioned in biology class - inside Xander, the one that no one but Jesse had ever touched.  
  
Xander flies apart.  
  
But through the white noise and white light, a comforting constant, is Spike’s voice voice in his ear, Spike’s scent and Spike’s arms, to keep him from going too far.   
  
He’s flying -  _floating_ , actually - but Spike is his tether.  
  
Despite rumors to the contrary, Xander has lots of head-space and for the next little while, he’s off in it, not thinking, so much as  _being_. Even his own internal babble has quieted, stopped. He’s aware of the last shudders of his orgasm, aware of being held up easily, aware of kisses on his face and lips and fervent, rather filthy endearments murmured in his ear like reassurances.  
  
Xander’s aware of  _Spike_  and how it feels to be held by him, possessed by him.  
  
He’s also slowly becoming aware of how the formerly-warm water has run out and been replaced by  _ice-fucking-cold_  water.  
  
When he opens his eyes, he sees a long, pale column of neck. Spike’s neck. Xander wants to say something, something about how he doesn’t have a vampire fetish. Or maybe he just wants to thank Spike for not letting him go.  
  
Either way, all that comes out when he tries to speak is a sighing groan.  
  
“It’s alright, love, it’s alright. You’re okay and I’ve got you,” Spike says so gently, he barely sounds like himself.  
  
Xander’s a limp, sodden - weeping? - shivering wreck in Spike’s arms, shaking less and less from the most powerful orgasm he’s ever had and more and more from the freezing cold water. But Spike's right; he  _is_  okay.  
  
He tucks his face in the crook of Spike’s neck. There’s no pulse, yet for some reason Xander finds that comforting. His teeth are chattering, but he can finally speak.   
  
“Cold.”   
  
“Me, too. Let’s see if we can’t remedy that.” Spike shivers, turns off the water - how Spike can even  _move_ , when Xander can barely  _think_  is a mystery - and kisses the tip of Xander’s cold, wet nose. “There, now. Let’s get you dried off and into bed, pet. We’ll continue this conversation later.”   
  
It may just be the impending unconsciousness talking, but Xander thinks bed may be the best idea ever, except for one point.  
  
“Easy for you to say, bleachy.” Xander croaks, then sags in Spike’s arms like a girl, which isn’t so much embarrassing as it is humiliating. The all-drum band in his head has started up again, playing a rousing rendition of _We Will Rock You_.   
  
Xander feels he’s already been rocked enough for now, please and thank you. “My legs are all funny.”  
  
“Hush.” Spike’s acquired a clean towel from somewhere - when had  _laundry_  been done? - is is briskly drying them both, somehow preventing Xander from sliding down the shower wall into a puddle of zeppo-sludge.  
  
“This’s gettin’ to be a habit, love.” Spike drops the towel on the floor and scoops Xander up, Errol Flynn-style and steps out of the shower. The amount of humiliation Xander  _should_  feel isn’t supportable on current energy supplies. Perhaps later, when he replays the past ten minutes - and he will be replaying them many,  _many_  times - he’ll be able to dredge up some real shame. For now, he just clings to Spike.  
  
He’s mostly asleep when Spike steps out of the bathroom and totally asleep when Spike tucks him into bed.


	9. 9

**August, 1997**  
  
 _It is_ not _supposed to be like this._  
  
Not that Jesse’s an expert in all things vampire, but he’s pretty sure that this is the nth possible degree of fuck-up. And who’s gonna pay for it? Xander, of course. It’s always been that way. . . Jesse does something impulsive and stupid and Xander takes the blame, takes the fall. Sometimes just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, other times, simply because it isn’t in him to stand by and let one of his friends get in trouble.  
  
 _This time_ , Jesse reflects, sitting on the edge of the creaky motel bed,  _this time, it’s a little bit worse than detention, Xan._  
  
And the urge to turn around, to see the mess he’s created, the one Xander’s already paying for, is stronger than ever. So Jesse jumps up and paces the exactly eighteen steps from wall to wall, avoiding the room’s only mirror, another reminder of the gulf between what he is and what he was.   
  
Avoiding anything that’ll show him even a glimpse of Xander’s unmoving body.  
  
 _You really want me, Jess?_  
  
Jesse'd been a loser when he was alive and now that he’s dead, he’s still a loser, just minus a pulse and a conscience. But he’s got some willpower, shit yeah. Hasn’t once looked back at the bed that holds his possibly-dying best friend, has he?  
  
 _Yeah, sure, I’ve got willpower for days and days when it doesn’t count for shit. . . ._  
  
It’s  _cajones_ , that he’s lacking, that he’s always lacked. When things go wrong, instead of finishing them, seeing them through come what may, he pusses out. Tonight was no different; he’d sprung away from Xander’s too-still body with a more than a twinge of fear and something. . . guilt-ish.  
  
But vampires don’t feel guilt.  
  
At least the cool, high-profile ones don’t. The Master hadn’t; neither had Darla or Luke. . . and look where all their not-guilting and coolness and crazy-carnage had gotten  _them_! On the wrong end of a stake!  
  
Nope, it’s not smart to be high-profile in the ‘Dale, anymore. Not if you’re a demon, it isn’t. In the months since the Slayer killed the Master, the only thing that’d kept Jesse alive was keeping the lowest of profiles. No matter what that entailed, from only hunting vagrants, hitchhikers and out-of-towners to steering clear of the Anointed One (the smug little prick) and his band of Master-obsessed wack-jobs.  
  
Occasionally, Jesse’s demon insists that the Anointed One  _could_  bring the Master back - bring  _Sire_  back. This hope is always met with Jesse’s sincere belief that if the Slayer could dust the Master once, she could do it again.   
  
But the Master isn’t coming back from the warm and toasty place Buffy’d sent him. Not if Sunnydale’s answer to the JLA has anything to say about it. So unless Jesse quits town altogether, it has to be strictly low-profile kills and no - repeat  _no_  plans for world or even Hellmouth domination. Which is fine, since ninety percent of what Jesse wants is currently in his bed, waiting to be turned. . . .  
  
“Fucking the Slayer’s sidekick and nearly turning him?” Jesse’s giggle is frantic, scared. “Not at all high-profile, Jess. Nosirree.”  
  
 _You really want me, Jess?_  
  
He stops pacing in front of the mirror, but doesn’t look into it. He lays his hands on the dresser, exactly where Xander’s had been, not one hour ago.   
  
Jesse can smell Xander on his skin, taste him on his lips, feel him coursing through his veins, hot and human and vital. Even the memory of Xander’s blood makes him want more, want to run out into the night and slake this awful thirst before Xander stops smelling like  _mate_  and starts smelling like  _food_.  
  
 _Jesus, Jess, it’s not that simple! You can’t just hurt people and not feel bad, it’s - it’s wrong! You can’t stay in Sunnydale and you can’t keep coming around! When Buffy gets back, she's gonna_ slay _you!_  
  
Jesse buries his face in his hands and closes his eyes, mentally replaying the feel of Xander’s warm fingers on his face, stroking, caressing. . . remembers smelling the almost-pheromones in the air and knowing,  _knowing_  that he’d have Xander that very night and every night thereafter.   
  
 _Xander, consort of Jesse of the order of Aurelius. . . damn, that sounds so fucking_ cool! Jesse’d thought all during the walk to the motel, letting Xander’s missed and much beloved babble flow over him.  _I’ll take my first consort tonight! Or maybe even. . . ._  
  
“It’s the  _maybe even_  that got me into trouble.” Jesse looks into the mirror and laughs bitterly at his lack of reflection. If he looked a little to the right, he could just see the reflection of Xander’s calf. . . . “It’s the  _maybe even_ s that always get me into trouble.”  
  
The heartbeat from the bed is steady, but so, so  _slow_. Xander isn’t dying yet, but he will be, if he doesn’t get help. Or if Jesse can’t finish what he started. . . .  
  
 _You really want me, Jess?_    
  
Xander’s voice had sounded small and scared in a way that Jesse’d never heard before. Looking into the motel mirror, into the reflection of Xander’s big, brown eyes had made the demon in him subside and the man in him - the _boy_ , really - sit up and take notice.  
  
For the first time, Jesse had consciously thought:  _I’d like to look into those eyes forever, feel him against me like this, sweet and warm. Xander_. . . .  
  
Now, that warmth is growing cold. Even if Jesse saves Xander, turns him, he’ll only ever grow colder. Xander will never be warm again, never be sweet and innocent. Whatever would be left after Xander was turned, wouldn’t be the  _same_  Xander.   
  
 _Xander’s good-guy, a hero._  Jesse is trying his hardest to not look at that pale reflection of leg; trying not to be drawn back to the bed by all the blood he has yet to taste.  _If I take that away, take his_ soul _away. . . how much_ Xander _would be left?  
  
Precious little_, Jesse thinks. Had been thinking from the moment Xander had looked into his eyes and said  _yes._  
  
“My fault he’s dying all my fault what have I done he’s my best friend what do I do?” Jesse asks the space where his reflection should be. The whole room smells like sex and blood and Xander, which makes Jesse feel horny and hungry and desperate. His demon, always close to the surface, refuses to let Xander slip away. It turns Jesse toward the bed.  
  
Xander’s still on his stomach, his skin turning pale, the bruises just starting to darken. A sluggish trickle of blood drools from the punctures in his neck. Blood is already soaking the pillow, warming neither Xander or Jesse. It’s wasted, just as everything that Xander was and could be will be wasted if Jesse doesn't do something.   
  
 _I love you, Jess. More than anyone in the world._    
  
Remembering how sure Xander had sounded simultaneously floors Jesse and galvanizes him.  
  
 _He’s_ mine _, and if I can’t finish this, step up to the plate, then Xander dies. There will be no ambulance, no hospital. No one between me and him._  
  
It’s ten steps to the bed and by the fifth, Jesse’s hard again, the scents of blood and sex working their old magic, even while part of him quails. But Xander was never meant to be this still. If the demon can ever truly understand _wrong_ , it understands this: Xander’s not meant to be this still.  
  
“I promised him,” Jesse whispers to the still frightened voice within, the  _boy_  within. That voice has gotten slowly weaker in the months since he was turned. Even now, Jesse’s demon can easily drown it out. Just as being in Xander and the first mouthful of hot, salty-sweet blood had drowned  _everything_  out. "A promise is a promise, even when I wish it wasn't."  
  
Crawling across the bed feels like a sneak attack on a corpse, or like necrophiliac date-rape (a metaphor his demon likes and Jesse loathes. He doesn’t debate it’s accuracy, however).  
  
Xander’s warm despite the blood-loss, but not as warm as Jesse remembers from just a short while ago.   
  
Jesse puts a minutely trembling hand on Xander’s hip and takes hold of his cock. Seconds later, he’s in Xander again, shivering with the need to take and come and  _turn_.  
  
It’s time. Time to finish this, to kill or curse. Letting Xander linger like this is a cruelty even his demon has no taste for.  
  
“Hear that, Xan? I’m gonna make you mine forever, just like I promised.” Jesse kisses Xander’s pale cheek, down to his throat. He’s unaware there are tears running down his face - he  _has_  fucked up, worse than ever - doesn’t even realize he’s already in gameface. “When you wake up, we’ll be together and. . . and. . . .”  
  
Jesse’s just about to sink his fangs into the depleted vein under them when he’s snatched out of and off of Xander and  _thrown_.  
  
He crashes through the motel room’s only window in a shower of wood and broken glass, sailing across the parking lot to land on a fifteen year old Buick, shattering it’s front windshield and his own spine.  
  
There’s pain - quite a lot of it; not the  _good pain_  Xander’d been mumbling about while Jesse drank from him - and bright moonlight, the color of a vampire’s smile.   
  
For long, agonizing moments, all he can do is lay where he’s landed, wonder what the hell happened and listen to his spine try to knit itself together. He’s pretty sure the back of his skull’s been badly fractured - it sure hurts like it is - and the big splinter of window-sill poking through his right thigh? Can’t be of the good.   
  
Footsteps approach Jesse - unafraid, unhurried - crunching on broken glass and splinters of wood, echoing off the pavement, into the bright, empty night. The scent that approaches with them is male; dark, bloody, familiar and. . . _family_?  
  
“Luke. . . please. . . .” is all Jesse can manage when the footsteps stop a few short feet away. But that can’t be right. The Slayer dusted Luke - and hadn’t Jesse been glad about that? Nearly sent Her Punning Righteousness a bouquet of FTD carnations - eleven months ago. Luke’s dead, Darla’s dead, the Master is  _mega-dead_  and Jesse’s broken; possibly worse than he’s ever been. And Xander -  
  
“ _Xander!_ ” Jesse’s voice is weak and trying to shout makes whatever’s punctured his lungs - rib bones? Shards of glass? Shards of  _spine_? - cut even worse. The sky is strangely grey, the stars washed out by the moon’s brilliance. He can’t even turn his head to look whoever-he-is in the eye.  
  
But his scent of age and strength and intensity is enough to put the fear of hell dimensions in Jesse’s undead heart. Then he speaks.  
  
“There’s nothing here for you, fledgling.” The stranger’s voice is stony, emotionless. Sterile in a way vamp voices usually aren’t. “The person you were is dead. Turning Xander Harris won’t change that.”  
  
In spite of it’s fear, Jesse’s demon snarls up at the indifferent moonlight. The calmer voice within him, the boy, realizes just how helpless he is, how helpless Xander is and forces down the demon, the growling and gameface.  
  
“Don’t hurt him. . . .town’s. . . fulla people. . . fulla blood.” Speaking of blood, all that he’d taken from Xander is leaking out of countless punctures, slices, gouges and holes. He can hear the wasted rain of it on the filthy, parking lot macadam. “Don’t - don’t hurt him. . . please.”   
  
“That’s sounds kinda odd. . . coming from the vampire who was just about to murder him.”  
  
“ _Turn him_. . . .”   
  
“Same difference. Only. . . if you’d had your way, Xander’d be damned, as well as dead. Nothing says  _I love you, sweetheart,_  like the gift of eternal damnation.” The mocking cruelty of that voice is somehow worse than either of the voices that torment Jesse. The urge to cower it inspires is familiar, makes Jesse want to fall to his knees, offer up his throat or anything else this vamp might want from him.   
  
Which makes this maybe the only time a broken spine is a blessing.  
  
“Do I know you?” Jesse asks the stranger and blood fountains up out of his mouth. It tastes like life, like Xander; Jesse feels a twinge of homesickness and a bigger twinge of lust. “Who are you?”  
  
“Someone who knows you’ve been stalking the Slayer’s best friend for weeks and tonight, you tried to turn him. Someone who’ll put a stake in your heart if you’re not out of town by this time tomorrow night.”  
  
“Don’t want to hurt him! I  _love_  him, I -” wet, racking coughs prevent Jesse from saying more. There’s definitely glass rattling around in there and if he survives the night, his body’ll have fun ejecting it.  
  
“If you really love him, then get gone and stay that way. Xander Harris needs to lose his soul like he needs another hole in his head.” The stranger’s voice is farther away, now, diminishing in volume. He’s going back toward the motel room. Back toward Xander. “I’ve spared your life, so to speak. Don’t make me regret it.”  
  
"I made him a promise and I gotta keep it!” Jesse's screaming, damn his damned, dead lungs. So what if they hurt? It's not like he needs them to breathe. "Xander doesn’t deserve to bleed out in some cheap motel!"   
  
"He won't." The stranger's voice sounds distant, now, as if he's talking to himself, not Jesse.   
  
“Xander's  _mine_!” The demon comes roaring out, again, trying to make Jesse’s useless spine work so he can ash this interloper before he lays a hand or fang on Xander. “Mine, you hear me?!? I -”  _promised!_  Jesse means to say, to scream, but his body has given up.   
  
He’s out like a light and out for the count, an undead, mangled surprise for some luckless, travelling salesman to find.  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
Spike examines his nails in the dim, basement atmosphere, Harris’s phone balanced between shoulder and ear. After exactly twenty-three rings, someone on the other end picks up.  
  
“Willy’s.”  
  
“Afternoon, chumly, it’s Spike.”  
  
“S-spike! Buddy! How are ya?”  
  
“Dead. Listen, I want whatever info you’ve got on a new-old player in Sunnyhell.”  
  
“Look, guy, I’d love to help you, us bein’ compadres and all, but I’m not really in the snitch-business, anymo-”  
  
“Willy, the sun will eventually go down. And when it does, I’ll be stopping by your lovely little rathole. Either to be informed or to play Rearrange the Vital Organs with my favorite stoolie.”  
  
“You can’t hurt me! I’m human!”  
  
“Only about three-quarters, mate. Wanna bet I can’t put a hurt on that last quarter?”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Fine. Whaddaya wanna know?”  
  
“Not what, who. Vamp named Jesse, from Sunnydale, left sometime before Dru and I hit town. Showed up again around my boy, last night -”  
  
“Your boy? What, you mean the  _Slayer’s_  boy? The one you been pallin’ around with, lately?”  
  
“- I already know who his sire is and when he was turned, so don’t waste my time with any of that crap. What I wanna know is where Jesse’s been, who he’s workin’ for - or who’s workin’ for him. I wanna know who he’s been seen with. I wanna know why he’s back.”  
  
“I can tell ya the name ain’t ringin’ any bells, so far.”   
  
“Sundown's in about seven hours, so I suggest you start diggin’, mate. Anything you can get me. Got me?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. Is that  _all_ , Herr The Bloody?”  
  
“That’s all. Just do what I ask and do it well. If I make any dosh off of this you’ll get one third.”  
  
“Half.”  
  
“Now you’re down to one quarter. Ta, Willy, see ya tonight. And you better have something for me.”  
  


*

  
  
After checking the curtains and sheets covering the window one more time, Spike gets back in bed with Harris - _Xander_  - who’s sleeping on his side. His breathing is slow, even, deep, the sheets tugged down enough to expose a warm, tanned expanse of back that Spike can’t help kissing. Close underneath the boy’s skin, hot, sweet, currently eighty-proof blood courses.  
  
“Such a nummy treat you are, Xander,” Spike whispers, running his fingers through the still-damp hair. It falls through his fingers like silken thread and Xander doesn’t even stir. “Can’t imagine why he didn’t claim you. . . .”   
  
Spike pulls the boy into his arms. In a few seconds, Xander turns over with a sleepy sigh, drapes himself over Spike and tucks his head under Spike’s chin.  
  
The boy throws off heat like an electric blanket with a heartbeat. Bloody lovely, it is. Restful.  
  
Spike has no plans to let go his new blankie any time soon.  
  
“It’s finders keepers, Harris. . . such is the way of the Hellmouth,” Spike murmurs into Xander’s hair. “If friend Jesse thinks otherwise, well. . . it’s a vamp-eat-vamp world, love, and I’ve got bigger fangs than his.”  
  
In minutes, Spike’s asleep, lulled by Xander’s steady heartbeat.


	10. 10

**August, 1997**  
  
When Xander wakes up he doesn’t  _feel_  dead - not that he knows what dead would feel like - but his first attempt to open his eyes and sit up makes him  _wish_  he was.  
  
Gradually, he becomes aware enough of his surroundings to realize he’s flat on his back in a firm bed that's definitely not his own, covered by a thin sheet and a heavy blanket. Both smell like generic dryer sheets, the same kind his mom used buy once upon a time, when she actually gave a shit.  
  
And if he’s noticing smells, that must mean breathing is still an involuntary response, which means -  
  
 _I’m not dead. But I_ should _be dead. . . shouldn’t I?_  
  
At first there’s only darkness, something which Xander has become increasingly familiar with. It’s a shifty, spinny darkness that says  _hi, guy, you’re not doing so well!_  Xander’s inability to do much more than breathe bears that out, but even if it didn’t - his head aches, his whole  _body_  aches; his limbs feel heavy and immovable. Even the slightest attempt at motility brings an weary, unpleasant, full-body pins and needles sensation.   
  
Xander’s throat is so dry, asking for water is entirely out of the question.  
  
A few brief eternities of silent, drifting consciousness and Xander notices small noises, knows someone is moving around the - motel? - room and he wishes he could open his eyes, but there’s no way that’s happening any time soon. In the meantime, the footsteps are familiar. . . .  
  
 _Jesse?_  
  
No, not Jesse. Whoever it is is big and - hell, if a walk could be said to be ponderous, this walk would be the epitome of ponderousness and broodiness and oh, fuck.  
  
“ _Angel_?” Xander croaks, parched throat forgotten.  
  
“Xander.”  
  
“Angel!”  
  
“Xander.”  
  
“Angel. . . .”  
  
“Xand- you know, when parrots do that, it’s kinda cute. When you do it, it’s just annoying.”  
  
“Parrots -? What the -? Jesus,  _Angel_.” The thought of being weak  _and_  asleep around Angel - despite the soul - gives Xander major wiggins. He tries to open his eyes, but each eyelash must have a thousand-pound weight attached to it because they ain’t a-movin’, not one iota. But Xander’s not panicking. It’s not like Angel would hurt him, right? He and Angel kid each other with the mocking and the utter contempt, sure, but Angel would never kill him and bury him in a shallow grave, then play Mister Innocent when Buffy gets back, right? Right?  
  
“Oh, crap! I think my eyelids are broken!” Even saying that much is a strain, considering that Xander’s trying to screech it like a frightened little girl, but can barely get out hoarse, breathless whispers.  
  
“Maybe I should’ve taken you to the hospital. . . you’re even less coherent than usual.”  
  
While trying to form a snide reply - and lift his broken eyelids - the darkness changes, gets non-shifty and non-spinny and is just -  _dark_.  
  
The next time it lifts, Xander’s eyes are open and he’s propped up in the bed that’s not his own, judging from the familiar, dryer sheet scent - which Xander never uses to wash his clothes because his mother never buys dryer sheets, anymore - and the non-sagginess of the mattress. Unfortunately, that restful scent is almost buried under Xander’s own aroma, which is less than fresh and Xander’s achy body is too, well, achy to appreciate the mattress fully.  
  
Yet he’s not as painfully debilitated as the last time he woke up. Or maybe that was a dream. Why else would he be holding a disturbing conversation with  _Angel_ , about  _parrots_.  
  
Spinning, fuzzy reality resolves into a sparely-furnished apartment, in beige, grey and black.   
  
 _Hey, look! I'm in Bruce Wayne’s college dorm room!_    
  
Xander smile a little. Then one of the larger shadows shifts and he nearly has a heart attack.  
  
As dark and uninteresting as his decor, Angel steps out of the shadows. He’s staring at Xander and sipping from a mug.   
  
 _Gee, I doubt that’s_ Tang _Broody’s slurping up._  
  
“Angel.”  
  
“Xand- don’t start that again.”  
  
 _So probably that wasn’t a dream. Okay. . . so what am I doing in Angel’s apartment?_  
  
“Nice place.” Xander’s throat is still dry, but not unbearably so; his voice is rough and insincere. Angel doesn’t blink.  
  
“I was beginning to think you’d never wake up.”  
  
“Sorry to disappoint you, big cahuna.” Xander tries to clear his throat, so he can get the best out of his sarcasm. He can’t even scrape up some of that icky phlegm that happens when your body’s run out of moisture. He's got nothing, the big  _el zip-o_ , but refuses to let that stop him. “Hey, if you’re extra good, maybe for Christmas I’ll - ah, fuck it. What the hell happened? How’d I get here?”  
  
For a second, Xander really has no idea what could  _possibly_  have happened, why he feels so weak and sick and so goddamned  _devastated_. And  _why_  has he been left to Angel’s tender, brooding mercy?  
  
But a memory of his own breathless voice comes rushing back -  
  
 _Do it, Jess. Turn me._  
  
\- like a freight train.   
  
“Oh, God.” Xander lifts hands that way fifty pounds each and runs them through his hair, which is greasy, like it hasn’t been washed in days. That begs an interesting question:  _how long have I been unconscious?_  
  
“I was patrolling near the  _Dew Drop Inn_  and I caught your scent. I thought you might need some help." Angel’s broody stare gets even more intense. “I found you bleeding out in one of the rooms.”  
  
“No. That’s not possible, it’s just not possible.” Xander’s shaking his head, hating how it makes the room spin, but unable to stop himself, just the same. Angel’s treating him to weighty silence number fifteen, the one that says  _oh, really?_  more clearly than words. When he finally speaks, his voice is softer than Xander would have ever expected.  
  
“You’d been bitten by a vampire, lost a little more than half your blood. You would’ve died -”  
  
“But that can’t be right,” Xander cuts Angel off impatiently. “Jesse was gonna - I mean we -“  _Yeah, Xan, do let’s tell Angel about Jesse promising to give me a happy_ and _a turny!_  “Um, I see.”  
  
“Do you, Xander?” That slight softening of Angel’s voice is gone, replaced by his usual monotone.  
  
Xander blushes and lowers his gaze. He tries to force his mind back. . . remembers looking into a mirror, seeing his own reflection and not Jesse’s, never Jesse’s. But then Jesse’s arms were around him, strong, possessive and gentle. And Jesse had kissed him. Turned him away from the mirror, looked into his eyes and kissed him.   
  
Xander would have died a thousand times for Jesse in that moment, would’ve given anything to feel that way forever. And Xander’d been promised that, hadn’t he? Later on, when his virginity was but an unlamented memory, Jesse had offered - Xander had accepted - and they’d both promised -  
  
“- because the Master’s dead, doesn’t mean Sunnydale is safe at night,” Angel is droning on, his eyes piercing, black pebbles in his anemic, caveman face. Jesse wasn’t nearly as pale as Angel, but even if he had been, on him, it’d be sexy. . . .  
  
“Are you even listening to what I’m saying, Xander?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, sure, Sunnydale’s safe at night. Say, you didn’t come across any other vampires hangin’ around the old DDI, huh?” Xander asks, trying to ignore the pleading whine in his voice. “Maybe with dark hair and dark eyes, kinda lanky. . . .”  
  
“I saw an open door. I saw you laying in a bed, half-dead and worked-over.” Angel’s giving him weighty gaze number forty-seven, now.  
  
Xander has also heard the term  _spirits drooped_  and is just now understanding what it implies. He’s also realizing that Angel has seen him naked. Naked and on his stomach in a motel room and unless Angel’s a complete dunce he’s probably inferred what  _anyone_  would infer from that particular scene.  
  
 _Why me? Oh why, why, why me?_  
  
“You could’ve died,” Angel reminds him, as if reading the probably mortified look on Xander’s face. Then he broods his way into the kitchen, a big, pale man wearing way too much black. Xander hears running water then the  _clink!_ of a mug being placed in the sink. When Angel reappears, he approaches the bed without meeting Xander’s eyes. “You’re lucky you escaped with your life and your soul.”  
  
 _Jesse wouldn’t have let me die, brood-for-brains,_  Xander thinks, doing his level best to drown out the nit-picking voice that’s asking him why Jesse had left him alone in the first place. Left him naked and bleeding and exposed.  
  
Left him for friggin’  _Angel_  to find. . . .  
  
“Well, how much blood am I out, again? A pint? Two?” Xander tries to laugh, but it sounds uncomfortably like a sob, so he stops.  
  
And Angel isn’t answering, only looking at Xander’s hands, which are noticeably shaking shaking.  
  
Xander tucks them under the blanket and clears his throat. “Still with me, dead-boy?”  
  
That earns Xander some eye contact. “Don’t call me that.”   
  
“Gee. . . saving my life has made you positively verbose, one might even say prolix.”  
  
“Why were you at the motel?”  
  
“I think that’d go under the heading of  _none of your damn business_.” Xander’s smile feels forced and fake, as do any smiles he directs at Angel.  
  
“Were you there with a vampire?”  
  
“As much as I enjoy our little heart-to-hearts, I really have to be going -” Xander tries to push back the covers and sit all the way up, but the room is spinning and his body is weak. Not to mention his lower half is extremely naked. . . .  
  
“Could I please have my clothes, so I can get outta here?” Xander asks politely, clutching Angel’s springtime fresh sheets to himself like adamantium armor. His thin veneer of faux dignity isn’t fooling him and it probably isn’t fooling Angel, either.  
  
“You need to rest. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” Angel grabs a bit of sheet and Xander  _yipe_ s!, about to scream rape. But Angel’s tugging the sheet up, not down. After a brief tug of war, Angel yanks the sheet practically up to Xander’s chin. “No one would be happier than me to see you wobble out of my place, never to return. But for now, you need to stay put. I don’t think you understand how close to death you were.”   
  
Xander pushes the sheet back down to navel-level, just to piss Angel off and glares. “Close enough to warrant a, hmm,  _doctor_ , maybe?”  
  
“I didn’t think you’d want to go to a hospital if there was some other way for your - illness to be resolved.”  
  
Xander detects a bit of sarcasm, but really, who can tell with that low-hanging brow and monumental glower?  
  
“Whatever. . . hey! Wouldn’t I have needed a blood transfusion, or something?”  
  
“Or something.” Angel smiles a little, but it isn’t terribly pleasant.   
  
“And what the heck does  _that_  mean?” Xander demands, wanting to scratch at his skin till all of whatever Angel had put in him is scratched out.  
  
Angel’s face has gone stonier than ever and his face has shifted from sullen and brooding to outright scary. “It means I know people with useful skills who know how to keep their mouths shut.”  
  
“Fine, I don’t wanna know.” And he really doesn’t. There’s only two things Xander wants to know and the other is - “Why?”  
  
“If you were to die or get turned. . . it’d break Buffy’s heart.”  
  
Xander let’s The Raised Eyebrow of Disbelief do his scoffing for him. They both know that if either of them died, Buffy would bend, but she wouldn’t break. Not by a long shot.  
  
After a few seconds, Angel shrugs and looks away. “You saved Buffy's life when I couldn’t. We’re even, now.”   
  
“Now that I’ll buy.”   
  
They both fall uncomfortably silent - male-bonding, nothing quite like it in the world - for a few minutes. Minutes that Xander could be using to find Jesse, maybe get some answers to that other thing he wants to know.   
  
Of course Xander really would rather not stagger around naked in front of Angel, but if that’s the only way to get to his clothes and get back to the  _Dew Drop Inn_. . . .   
  
 _You know what? Angel’s seen me naked, knows I had sex with a male vampire - hell, he probably knows Jesse was gonna turn me. Even if he’s too stupid to put two and two together about how he found me, I’m sure that vampire schnozzola clued him in about what Jesse and I were doing. Big, fat deal. I literally have nothing to hide from him, so why try?_  
  
Angel watches him shove back the covers silently. When Xander finally manages to swing his legs over the side - which leaves him sweating and panting like he’s run a race - Angel puts a restraining hand on his shoulder, pushes him back into the pillows.  
  
“Did you miss what I said about you nearly dying?” Dead-boy actually sounds angry, now. Xander’s not even a little frightened, no way. If anything happens to him at Angel’s hands, Buffy -  
  
\- is in LA. Right-o.   
  
“Let me go!” Xander tries to pull away. Angel lets go of his arms only to grab his legs, putting them back in the bed.  
  
“You’re going to get yourself killed.” Angel’s eyes aren’t just angry, they’re frustrated. With Xander, with the world - who knows? “You’re gonna get yourself killed and  _damned_.”  
  
“Fuck off, dead-boy!” Brave words, but after a few seconds of flailing, the world has started to spin again and Xander’s limbs suddenly have the all the strength of cooked spaghetti. Angel tucking him in seems like the least of his problems. “No, I have to go find Jesse -”  
  
“Going back to that motel to be with him. . . that would be very stupid.” Angel’s keeping Xander on his back by resting one hand lightly on Xander chest. It’s embarrassing and humiliating and infuriating, so Xander stops struggling. “Listen to me, I know what I’m talking about."  
  
“If I didn’t know it before, I know it now: vampires? Really bad company!” He smacks at Angel’s hand till Angel gets the hint. But when Xander tries to turn away, Angel puts that giant, ham hand back on Xander’s chest again.   
  
Leaving isn’t an option, turning over is no longer an option. . . .  
  
Stupid vampire.  
  
“No matter who he was before he was turned, a vampire is just a demon -”  
  
“Just, let it go!” Xander closes his eyes, since Angel won’t let him turn away. "This is none of your business, anyway."  
  
“- wearing the face of someone you think you love.”  
  
“You don’t know Jesse, he’s different, he’s. . . he wants me!” Angel’s voice is like the Energizer bunny; it goes on and on and on in Xander’s head. “He  _loves_  me!”  
  
“And if a vampire  _claims_  to love you, you’d better pray he’s lying, ‘cause if he’s not. . . .” Angel’s laugh is rueful, strained. “If he’s not, well, I somehow doubt you’re equipped to handle a vampire’s love.”  
  
“Is Buffy?” Xander snaps, hoping that’ll shut the real!Angel and the Xander’s-blood-deprived-brain!Angel up.  
  
Another one of those weighty silences, only tenser, forces Xander to sneak a peek through his lashes. Angel is staring at Xander’s hands again.  
  
“Despite what you may have been told, everything changes when you’re turned.” Those grim, dark eyes tick to Xander’s. “Everything.”  
  
Wonder of wonders, Xander doesn’t have a comeback for that one. Angel’s voice is way too bitter and regretful to be mocked. Xander had been ready to throw away his own soul for a vampire that had left him to die without even closing the door so he could die in private. If anyone has the right to mock dead-boy's angst, it's not Xander. Not anymore.  
  
 _. . . blood pounds in his ears and rushes through his veins, hot like a fever, flowing out of him and into Jesse. Instead of white noise and white light, there’s only darkness, filled with the sound of his own slowing heartbeat. . . ._    
  
Xander closes his eyes again and lays back down. Angel’s cold, heavy hand finally lifts of his chest.  
  
 _Do it, Jess. Turn me._  
  
No, he really doesn’t have the right to be making any snappy comebacks or claiming any kind of moral high-ground.  
  
“Is Jesse dust?” Xander's voice sounds strange to his own ears, too soft, too high, too scared.  
  
“ _Jesse’s_  dead." The finality of that statement, of that cold monotone almost stops Xander's heart. But Angel goes on: "Jesse’s  _demon_  - blew town a couple nights ago. You’ve been out of commission for two days,” Angel adds, but Xander isn’t listening anymore, doesn’t care. Jesse hadn't been dusted, he'd simply left.   
  
 _I love you, too, Xander. Forever,_ Jesse had promised. Remembering the sincerity he’d obviously imagined on that soulless face  _hurts_ , and it’s not the good kind of hurt, oh no. It hurts almost as much as imagining Jesse, miles away, by now - gone as far as Oxnard, or maybe LA - smirking at him or laughing at him or worse -  
  
Not thinking of him at all.  
  
 _I guess forever didn’t last as long as I thought it would._  
  
Cold, tentative fingers touch his face. Angel is brushing away tears Xander didn’t even realize he’d been shedding. His touch is sure and gentle, just like Jesse’s had been. . . .  
  
Xander flinches away.  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
It’s a fight, but Xander opens his eyes.   
  
The drapes are very carefully drawn against late afternoon sunlight; the room is very dim.  
  
 _At least the headache is. . . manageable,_  Xander thinks just as the thudding starts up. It’s bad, but not as bad as he’d feared. He’s able to sit up without the room spinning or lurching. . . much.  
  
“Afternoon.”  
  
Startled, Xander looks over at the torture chair. Draped all over it like a giant cat, is Spike. He’s wearing skin-tight jeans and nothing else. His Billy Idol-hair sticks up in tufts and curls, untamed and ungelled as of yet, and his pale, pale skin seems to glow in the basement gloom. He looks -   
  
 _So. Fucking. Hot. But not as hot as he looks when he’s dripping wet and about to come._  
  
 _Whoa. I had sex with Spike. I. Had sex. With_  Spike.  _In the shower._  
  
“Uh - hi, um, Spike.” Xander is stammering, but it’s a witty stammer. And people say alcohol is bad for the brain.  
  
Spike’s smirking, but there’s nothing -  _different_  about the smirk. Xander’s been waking up to that same smirk every morning for months, now. “Feelin’ better, then?”   
  
 _Oh, so many ways to take that question, but I think I’ll take it at face value, for now._  “Still hungover, but otherwise fine.”  
  
“Must be tough, bein’ such a bleedin’ lightweight.” Spike’s smirk turns into a grin. “There've been nights when I had five times what you drank and was still able to take on a cemetery full of fledges.”  
  
“Wow. That’s an impressive feat of alcoholic violence, but some of us still have working livers. That we want to _keep on_  working.”  
  
“Excuses, excuses.” Spike’s lips are twitching like he wants to smile. Xander’s never realized that without his habits and nervous gestures, Spike looks like the corpse of some male model. Which should be creepy and unsexy, but is actually sexy and uncreepy.  
  
Xander blushes and looks around the basement. Same shit, different day.   
  
 _Shouldn’t it be - I dunno, different? I mean, I had sex with Spike._ Mind-blowing _sex with Spike, if I’m not mistaken. The least the basement could do in acknowledgement is look cleaner, or a little less bleak. . . stupid basement._  
  
A few minutes of staring at the walls, at the floor, at his hands - at anything but what he  _really_  wants to stare at - and Xander thinks he’s ready to face Spike without giggling or jittering or doing anything  _too_  zeppo. So he takes a deep breath and glances up, catching Spike’s face in a look that's nothing like his normal sneer. No, this is a soft, easy smile, like someone opened the curtains and let in the sun. Which besides being impossible is super lame.   
  
But that smile is gone so fast, Xander’s not sure he saw it and being unsure, has to say  _something_ , find out if he’s way off base this morning was a fluke or not. The trick is to sleuth it out subtly, with leading questions and an unreadable poker face.  
  
“So, the shower-sex was fun.”  
  
\- and that was not quite as subtle and unreadable as Xander would’ve liked, but he’s working at a deficit, as the slow throbbing in his head reminds him.  
  
Spike, meanwhile, gives Xander a lazy once-over. “That it was.”  
  
“The kind of fun that could be more than a one time thing, right?” Yes, Xander is quite aware that he sounds like a pathetic sissy-girl. It’s all the Jagermeister’s fault.  
  
“Dunno, mate,” Spike says, holding Xander’s gaze. “Depends, dunnit?”  
  
Xander swallows nervously; Spike could be playing him. He’s a very good actor, when he wants to be. “On?”  
  
Spike uncoils himself from the torture chair and stalks over to the bed. Xander’s eyes widen until it feels like they’ll fall right out of his head. He’s seen Spike fight a lot, especially lately, what with the shared patrolling and Spike’s tendency to start shit with random large and slimy demons - but Xander's never seen this  _walk_. . . .  
  
If sex had a walk - hell, if sex was a person, it still wouldn’t be as sexy as Spike-on-the-prowl.  
  
 _Ah. Afternoon wood,_  he thinks as Spike stalker-crawls up the bed, undressing already-naked!Xander with his laser-beam blue eyes. The crawl ends with Spike’s lips centimeters from Xander’s.  
  
“On?” Xander whispers again, because he has to say  _something_ , not because he needs an actual answer.  
  
“On how well you’re feelin’, love.” Spike drawls, moving away a little when Xander leans forward to turn the brushing of their lips into a kiss.   
  
“Spike, come on. . . .” Xander trails off as Spike’s cool and  _very_  talented hand grips his cock through the sheets.   
  
“Hmm. . . you feel well enough for a shag, to me,” Spike opines in that low, rumble-y, sexy purr of a voice. If Xander wasn’t already hard, that voice alone would be enough to get him to full-mast.  
  
“Guess I missed the part of your adventures when you went from being William The Bloody to William The M.D.” Xander’s cracking wise, but Spike, ever the problem solver, shuts him up in the best possible way.  
  
“Okay. . . so. . . .” Xander laughs nervously between kisses. It would seem his babble isn’t quite broke. Stupid babble.  
  
“Pet, this is not the time for yammering on, yeah?” Spike takes Xander’s hand, pulls it to his fly and boy, oh boy, is Spike ever hard. “You’ve got a package to unwrap.”  
  
Xander blushes and glances down - then back up, very quickly, but he’s got an image burned into his brain, yep, he does. And he wonders if it’s because Spike’s jeans are practically sprayed on that he looks so - so -  
  
“Unbutton me, pet,” Spike gently instructs. Xander immediately obeys, for a wonder not needing his eyes to navigate the difficult waters of the button fly. In a few seconds, there are no more buttons to un, and crisp hair brushes his fingers. Dragging his eyes away from Spike’s, Xander looks down again and time just - stops.   
  
Despite the whole gay-thing, Xander’s never been one for actually  _admiring_  cocks. His personal philosophy is - or was: dicks’re like really good Egg Foo Young. They taste good, they make you feel good. . . but they’re not gonna win any beauty pageants.  
  
Spike’s cock, however, must be the exception; it’s pale and perfect and Xander’s already wondering what an uncircumcised cock would feel like inside him. Would it hurt, at first? Would he come harder or sooner or -   
  
“See something you like, I take it?” Spike’s amused voice snaps Xander out of his cock-induced brain-fugue and he looks up, blushing so deeply, his face is actually hot.  
  
“I - sorry -” The shower-sex had in no way prepared him for seeing Spike - like  _this._  
  
“No need to be, love, but - you can look  _and_  touch, you know?”  
  
Spike’s eyes glimmer in a way Xander can’t read; but that glimmer is almost always there when Spike looks at him. More than a little dismayed, Xander finds some other place to park his eyeballs - hey! A new water-stain on the ceiling! - but Spike immediately turns his face till their eyes meet again.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing.” Xander tries to look away again but Spike doesn’t let him.  
  
“Are you not ready for this?”  
  
“No, it’s not that -”  
  
“ _What_ , then, Xander?”  
  
Xander shivers at the sound of his name and closes his eyes, since he can’t turn his face away. “This isn’t some awful joke, right? Humiliate the Zeppo? I mean, if it is, please stop. You’ve had your laugh, so just -”  
  
“Does this feel like a joke to you?” Spike takes Xander’s hand again and places it on his cock. Xander’s touch is just as instinctive and possessive as any of Spike’s touches had been in the shower. “This  _feel_  like I’m waitin’ to laugh at you?”  
  
Xander knows he should stop stroking, shouldn’t be grasping and squeezing and making things even more complicated. They really shouldn't be doing this, whatever  _this_  is; not when there's a good chance one of them - probably Xander - will wind up broken, bereft and bleeding. “I’ve been lied to before. Used and lied to and left behind.”  
  
“By some tosser of a fledge, but not by me. Not my M.O, pet, not with you.” Spike's laugh is soft and rueful. “I know I don’t inspire monumental trust in anyone, but you’re gonna have to take a leap of faith. If you do, love. . . I’ll make it worth your while.”  
  
Xander doesn’t answer, but opens his eyes and looks into Spike’s face. It’s the face of a model, of a corpse, of an angel, and if it’s lying to him. . . Xander isn't able to tell. Not that he ever has been.  
  
He pushes Spike’s jeans slowly down his thighs, never breaking eye-contact. For now, that’s enough of an answer for them both.


	11. 11

**August, 1997**  
  
“You’re fucking insane.” Xander crosses his arms over his chest and glares at Angel, who doesn’t even blink.  
  
“I said no, Broody, and in case you’ve never seen an Afterschool Special,  _no means no_ ,” Xander adds in his best _speaking-to-a-slow-child_  voice. Angel’s expression doesn’t shift one iota, he just glowers down at Xander.  
  
“You stink.”  
  
“Okay, is that gonna be your response to  _everything_  I say?!” Xander demands.   
  
“Until you stop stinking, yeah.”  
  
Xander tries another glare, which works about as well as the others had; he finally settles for a sigh. “I don’t wanna take a shower here, not that I think your cleaning skills aren’t up to snuff. I just wanna go home, so gimme my fucking clothes.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Gimme my clothes, Angel!”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I--”  
  
“You?”  
  
“--hate you!”  
  
“Yeah?” If it was possible to be smug while glowering. . . . “Well, get in line.”  
  
“God, why do you have to be such an asshole? Just lemme go home! My parents--” Xander can’t even pretend to himself that his parents have noticed he’s been gone for two days, let alone Angel. “Willow’s probably freaking out!”  
  
“You can call Willow from here, no one’s stopping you,” Angel says. It’s not a  _you stink_ , but neither is it what Xander wants to hear.  
  
“Yeah, great, call Wills. And tell her what, exactly?”  
  
“Um, how ‘bout the truth?”  
  
The truth? Tell Willow that vampified!Jesse was still the 'Dale,  _still_  vampified and probably eating people? That vampified!Jesse had been stalking him all summer and he hadn’t confided in her? That he’d had hot, fun, man!sex with vampified!Jesse and begged to be turned?   
  
That vampified!Jesse had lied to him and left him half-dead and bare-ass naked in a motel room?   
  
 _That_  truth?   
  
Xander rolls his eyes and flops back into the pillow. “Um, how ‘bout  _not_?”   
  
If he didn’t know better, he’d swear Angel’s current glower is an  _amused_  glower. “So let me get this straight: you don’t want to eat, you don’t want to shower, you don’t want to call Willow to let her know you’re not undead in a ditch somewhere and you enjoy stinking to high heaven?”  
  
"It's scary how well you can read me," Xander dead-pans. It isn’t that he enjoys the major b.o. he’s got going on, but underneath that smell--way underneath--is Jesse’s scent: prickly-sweet, kinda like a stick of  _Big Red_  chewing gum. Xander would swear to it in any court of law, even though swearing would get him a nice, padded room at Shady Rest.   
  
All he has left of Jesse is the healing holes in his neck and that scent, buried though it is by admittedly unrighteous b.o.  
  
And if that b.o. offends dead-boy’s delicate wittle nose? Call it icing on a really crappy cake.  
  
“If you don’t like the way I smell, why don’t you let me go home.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Why not?!”  
  
“I’m gonna take you into the bathroom. You can bathe on your own--get it over with quickly and retain some dignity, or--” Angel is actually smiling, now. It’s not a nice smile. In fact, it’s a distinctly  _not-nice_  smile. “Or I can scrub every single inch of you, till you’re raw and bleeding. Either way, you’re gonna stop stinking.”  
  
“Have I told you how much I hate you?”  
  
“Not for several minutes, no.”  
  
“I hate you a  _lot_.”  
  
“What else is new?”  
  


*

  
  
Once in the shower, Xander’s legs are shaky with the effort of standing, but the thought of Angel bathing him--shudders--is enough to put some steel in them.   
  
“Are you gonna be okay in here by yourself?” Angel’s voice, solicitous and unwanted.  
  
Xander shrugs Angel’s big, cold, dead-guy hand off his arm. “I’ll be fine, mom. Beat it, unless you wanna watch.”   
  
Angel doesn’t say anything, but gives Xander a totally unself-conscious once over, so slow and thorough, Xander’s bright red by the time Angel’s eyes light on his face once again.  
  
“Maybe next time.”  
  
Then the shower door is swinging shut. A second later, the bathroom door clicks closed.   
  
Alone at last.  
  
Xander leans his head on the glass door and closes his eyes. There are tears running down his face, uncalled for, uncontrolled. Maybe because it’s the first time he’s been left alone since he opened his eyes. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t let himself think about Jesse properly since waking up. . . .  
  
 _He left. Without a good-bye or an explanation, just up and left, like he did a year ago._  
  
And Xander doesn’t even have  _The Ache_ , the one he’d just known he’d have for days the moment Jesse entered him. All he has left is fuzzy memories, wicked b.o. and -  
  
Xander’s fingers graze the nearly closed punctures in his neck and he's instantly turned-on. Just minutes before, under Angel’s assessing gaze, his testicles had tried a strategic retreat north. Now--  
  
Now he’s half-hard and wondering if the knowing look he’ll get from dead-boy is worth jerking off in the shower.  
  
 _No, I really don’t think it is._  
  
Unfortunately, Mr. Happy’s got other ideas.   
  
In fact, Mr. Happy’s up with people and loaded for b'ar.  
  
“Okay, there will be  _no_  stroking off in dead-boy’s shower,” Xander whispers to an undeterred Mr. Happy. Then he realizes that if Angel is keeping an ear tuned--if only to make sure Xander doesn’t slip or pass out--he’ll hear every noise Xander makes.  
  
And Mr. Happy just keeps getting happier.   
  
 _Is this turning into a vampire fetish? Am I just gonna be turned-on by every vampire I think about? Even the tall, pale, brooding, sexy--not finishing that thought! Not!_ Xander turns the cold spigot vengefully--take that, Happy, you rotten sum’bitch!--but can’t make himself step under the spray.  
  
And oh, God, the  _Big Red_  scent is stronger now, as if Jesse is standing right behind Xander, about to wrap strong, cool arms around him and whisper against his neck:  
  
 _You're so good, Xan, so beautiful, can't wait to fuck you._  
  
Xander doesn’t realize that he’s given in to Mr. Happy’s awful demands, wouldn’t be able to stop even if he did.  
  
 _You smell like mine . . . my own. . . do you wanna be mine? Forever?  
  
Yes. Please, yes. . . ._  
  
Then Jesse would be in him, his body pressing Xander’s against the shower wall. His fangs would reopen the punctures, his hands would settle on Xander’s hip and his cock and--  
  
 _I've always wanted you, Xander. I always will._  
  
\--and Xander would come all over the door to Angel’s shower, panting like he’d just finished a 10k.  
  
Too wrung out to be embarrassed--there’s a very strong possibility he may have yelled or groaned or  _something_ that Angel’s bat-ears would’ve picked up--he doesn't realize he’s still stroking the reopened holes in his neck until Mr. Happy tries to stand at attention, again.   
  
It takes every ounce of willpower in him to drop his hand to his side, and doing so makes him feel even more empty and alone.  
  
 _Why did you do this to me, Jess? How could you leave me like this? It would've been less cruel to just drain me . . . anything but this. . . ._  
  
Xander starts to raise his hand once more, to touch the bite marks--it’s already turned into a habit, great--then forces his hand down to his side again. He grabs the soap-- _Dial_? Angel uses  _Dial_? Is that surreal or what?--and steps under the punishing spray.  
  


*

  
  
Angel is changing the sheets on his bed, when the pheromones hit him like a slap in the face. He doesn’t even realize he’s stopped folding--dropped the soiled sheet on the floor--until a choked-off groan, more misery than pleasure, reaches his ears.  
  
By the time the bitter smell of semen fills the apartment--not unlike the scent of tears--clean sheets cover the bed and the dirty sheets are in a garbage bag.   
  
And Angel--  
  
Has left the building.  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
“Buggering. Hell.”   
  
Spike sounds shocked and blissed-out. Spike  _is_  shocked and blissed out. All he can do is stare up at the spreading water stain on the ceiling and grin.  
  
“Wild, huh?” Xander sounds extremely pleased with himself, smells like sunshine and chocolate and confidence. As well he should.  
  
“ _Wild_?" Spike snorts at that bit of understatement. "You've got half my brain coating your esophagus, pet."  
  
“Okay,  _eww_. But I’ll take that as a compliment.”  
  
“Go right ahead.” Normally, that phrase would be jam-packed with sarcasm, or at the very least irony, but Spike’s sarcasm and sense of irony have gone down the boy’s throat, along with his right frontal lobe.   
  
“Oi, where the bloody hell did you learn that?” Spike may just have to send whomever it was a candy-gram.  
  
“Fabulous. Ladies. Nightclub.” The smugness in the boy's voice is almost adorable, but Spike'll never admit that to anyone, least of all the boy in question.  
  
“Love, if I’d known you could suck cock so prettily, I’d have got you staggering drunk a long time ago.”   
  
Xander shifts around till he’s cuddled up against Spike’s side and nuzzling Spike’s shoulder. “Wow, that's . . . touching. You should send it to  _Hallmark_.”   
  
“Just givin' credit where credit is due, pet. Got a mouth on you like a dockyard whore.”  
  
“You really are a poet, Spike.”  
  
Spike smiles and pulls the boy closer, till the wonderful, soothing body heat feels almost like his own. “You’d be the first to think so.”   
  
“Hmm?” The boy sounds more than a little distracted; no surprise there, considering what he’s currently got a kung-fu grip on.   
  
“Nothing . . . gonna suck out what’s left of my brain, then?”   
  
“Maybe.” No maybes about it, to Spike’s way of thinking; not when those nuzzles have turned into biting kiss, already wending their way south.  
  
With the kind of speed that makes Spike glad to be a vampire, he rolls onto Xander and pushes his legs up and out. He’s brushing the boy’s opening with his finger before the “gah!” finishes sounding.   
  
“That’s enough talk and afterglow, pet, I’m ready for the main event.”   
  
“Which would be . . . ?” Xander’s breathing has picked up and his eyes are more pupil than iris. His body’s shaking and quivering.  
  
Spike looks at the territory he’s about to annex and takes his time answering. “Well . . . it involves me retrieving that tube of slick you keep in your night-table--” he grins at the painfully deep blush that covers the Xander’s body. “--and fucking you stupid-er.”   
  
Spike pushes his finger in briefly and Xander bucks violently, nearly tumbling Spike to the floor.  
  
For nearly a minute, the only sound in the room is Xander’s panting   
as they stare into each other’s eyes.  
  
“Okay,” Xander says, seemingly apropos of nothing. Spike’s eyebrow quirks up.   
  
“More than okay, from what I can tell, love.” Now Spike’s the one who sounds smug. Impossibly, the boy blushes even deeper.  
  
“That was an, um, interesting proposal, but can I make you a counter proposal?” Xander rolls them over and kneels between Spike’s legs, pinning his hands to the bed.  
  
 _Wonder if that’s something else he'd picked up at this Fabulous Ladies Nightclub. . . ._  
  
There’s still blush, but absolutely no stammer. “What if I want the main event to involve  _me_  retrieving the tube of slick I keep in my night-table and fucking  _you_  so hard your heart starts beating again?”   
  
Spike blinks in surprise, but covers it up with a trademark leer. “Well, well, looks who wants to play at being alpha-male of the basement.”   
  
“Who’s playing?” The smile on the boy’s face is  _predatory_ , like the last smile you’d see before being devoured.   
  
 _Such a lovely vampire you’d make, pet. Your old mate was a git._  
  
Xander leans down for a kiss and Spike obliges, tasting himself in the boy’s mouth. After a few seconds, Xander breaks the kiss and sits up,   
  
“Hey, if you’re gonna fuck the life back into me, I’d suggest you get on with it, Harris.”  
  
“Patience, patience, The Bloody.” Xander reaches to Spike’s left and yanks the night-table open. Half the contents are jostled or discarded onto the floor before Xander triumphantly slaps the tube of lube into Spike’s waiting hand.  
  
“What? Want me to read you the instructions, now?”   
  
“Want you to put it on me.” Xander leans in to mouth Spike’s throat, biting playfully.  
  
Oh, the boy's cruel, he's twisted, he’s--  
  
“Christ!” Spike gasps as Xander bites down almost hard enough to draw blood.  
  
\--he’s a bloody natural, is what he is.  
  
“Not even close, but I will answer to  _oh, God, harder,_ ” Xander’s murmur sounds suspiciously like a chuckle.  
  
“Oi!” Spike’s rolls them over again and gazes skeptically into big, too-innocent-to-be-believed brown eyes. “You’re very forward, all of a sudden—where’s the infamous babble and stammer?”  
  
When Xander opens his mouth to answer, Spike--ever the opportunist-- steals kisses till the boy’s starved for oxygen and hopefully too far gone to string together smart-mouth comments.  
  
“So . . . you wanna fuck me?" At the boy’s eager nod, Spike smiles, eyeing the boy’s cock with faux-disinterest. "Gimme one reason I should let you?"  
  
"Umm. . . 'cause you just said you would?" The boy says, obviously trying to martial his--hah--wits. "'Cause I  _really, really_  want to?"   
  
"Might, love. Said I  _might_." Spike runs a feather-light touch over the tip of the boy's cock, which results in a sentence filled entirely with swears. "And how long have you  _really, really_  wanted to fuck me?"  
  
"You--fuck--had me at dockyard whore, Spike . . . you had me at dockyard whore."  
  
"Answer, pet, or I'll let you finish this discussion with your right hand." Spike frowns, the sudden gravity in his voice at odds with the hand now rubbing soothing circles on the boy's stomach.  
  
Xander takes a breath and let's it out slowly, opening his eyes. "Since--if you laugh, you're so not getting any, either, mister--since the first time I saw you and Buffy square off.”  
  
“Really? Since then?” Which was Spike-speak for:  _You don’t just want me because I’m the only vamp who can’t hurt you?_  
  
“Yeah.” Which was Xander-speak for:  _yeah_ , as Xander was in no state to pick up any kind of subtext.  
  
"Huh." Spike smiles softly in fond remembrance. "Good times, those, good times."  
  
"Yeah, real good times." Xander rolls his eyes. Spike smirks and resumes the tummy-rub, letting his hand occasionally slide a bit lower.  
  
"Have to say, though, I thought all those pheromones you were givin' off were for Peaches, not little ol' Spike. Especially since Peaches was reciprocating."  
  
Instead of a gasp of displeased surprise, Xander blushes. Interesting.   
  
 _The boy's been attracted to at least three vampires, and in all three cases, that attraction was reciprocal. And he’s had sex with two of those vamps--unless there’d been more than just pheromones between him and Peaches. . . .  
  
Oh, bugger, don't tell me I'm getting Angelus's leftovers _again _. . . bad enough he’s had Dru, but this_ boy. . . .  
  
"Has he had you?" There's more growl in his voice than Spike had meant there to be, and he's itching to slip on gameface.  
  
"No!" Xander exclaims with a shudder, though he smells almost like regret. "Thank God, no."   
  
Spike isn't sure if he's being lied to, or not, but he's seen Xander try to lie before. There just isn't nearly enough stammering and inappropriate laughter to mean he's lying now.   
  
However, that doesn't mean the boy hadn't  _wanted_  something to have happened. " _Thank God, no_? Close call, was it? Sure you won’t go calling out the wrong name during?”  
  
"Spike. . . ." Xander moans miserably, his scent changing noticeably from relaxed and aroused, to uncomfortable and upset.  
  
"Alright, pet, never mind," Spike says, willing to let the matter go for now, satisfied Xander hasn't been comparing him to Peaches. He files his doubts away for later consideration and pats the boy's thigh.  
  
"So, pet, where were we? Oh, yeah." Spike opens the lube and squeezes out enough to--barely--coat the boy’s cock. He strokes slowly, leering when Xander’s eyes finally flutter closed in pleasure.   
  
“Now then, show me what you can do with this monster.”  
  



	12. 12

**August, 1997**  
  
“Eat it.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I said eat it.”  
  
“How do I know you didn’t poison it, or something?”  
  
Angel glares at the small bowl of instant oatmeal, and if looks could kill, it’d be one ex-bowl of oatmeal, that’s for sure. “You know, I’m starting to wish I had.”  
  
“Says the crime-fighting, allegedly good super-vamp.” Xander rolls his eyes.  
  
“Just eat it, okay? The sooner you eat, the sooner you’re out of here.”  
  
“ _’Out of here’_  as in frolicking up and down the verdant hills of Sunnydale or  _‘out of here’_ , as in resting in peace beneath the verdant hills of Sunnydale?”  
  
And if looks could kill, Xander’d be one ex-teenager.   
  
“Alright, Darth Angel. Supposing that’s not poisoned--”  
  
“Why, oh why didn’t I let you die?”  
  
 _Yeah, why_ didn’t _you let me die?_  
  
“--supposing that’s not poisoned, how do I know you haven’t spit in it, hunh?” The look Angel gives him is so black, Xander starts laughing. “Or is spit one of those bodily fluids you guys just can’t make?”  
  
Angel shoves the cooling bowl of cereal at him. “Eat it or don’t, I’m going for a walk.”  
  
He slams out of the apartment. Five minutes after the door closes behind His Brooding Magnificence, Xander’s asleep and the bowl is empty.  
  


*

  
  
Xander Harris  _still_  smells like family and therein lays the problem, at least as far as Angel is concerned.  
  
And now, unable to sleep or sit still, he paces his apartment restlessly, too close and too far from the boy all at the same time. The walk hadn’t helped Angel clear his head or calm his jangling nerves  
  
Making Xander  _shower_  had helped, as far as the b.o., but hadn’t eradicated, or even masked the scent--something spicy, sharp and  _red_ , like blood and cinnamon--that even now clings to Xander’s skin and hair.   
  
That scent makes Angel’s demon rail and thrash against the prison bars of the soul.  
  
While awake, the boy’s snarky stubbornness had reminded him almost poignantly of Spike.  _Almost poignantly_ , because nothing about Spike, even the fonder memories, ever feels poignant.  
  
But asleep--and so deeply--the boy’s face is pale, young and troubled; reminiscent of Drusilla. Both her face and Xander’s are combinations of darkness and innocence, softness and starkness, beauty and despair.   
  
Five minutes don’t go by, without Angel pausing his pacing to hover over the sleeping boy.   
  
 _Neediness, desperation and innocence--he’s ripe for corruption,_ the demon whispers, when it realizes raging has gotten it precisely nowhere.  _Breaking Drusilla was amateur hour, compared to what we could do to this child. We could him a masterpiece._  
  
“No,” Angel whispers to the darkness within and the darkness without.   
  
He whispers it to the monster living in his heart and boy sleeping in his bed.   
  
 _Yes. Take him. Take the Slayer’s minion--he already smells like family._  
  
The images the demon conjures up--Xander Harris chained to the bed, a human canvas painted in blood and bruises.   
  
Xander Harris’s body underneath them, broken, bleeding and near death.   
  
Xander Harris’s dark eyes as dead as his soul. . . .   
  
. . . those same eyes reanimated with the cold hunger of a demon.  
  
Torture and take, kill and turn. . . .   
  
With the boy smelling like something halfway between  _food_  and  _consort_ , Angel knows he can’t afford to lose his head. But the urge to take that sweet, human warmth, feel it give and eventually break--  
  
The bloody scenarios the demon whispers from inside its cage are terrible and beautiful. Such pleasure and possibility, wrapped in this ignorant and too-trusting child is all but impossible to ignore.  
  
Just as Angel reaches out to touch the boy’s shoulder, like a flash of white light, Buffy's face replaces the images, drives back some of the terrible  _hunger_.  
  
She’s more beautiful than his own redemption and he loves her.   
  
Angel's in love with the Slayer.   
  
Since the first time he laid eyes on her, fresh and carefree on a school day, impossibly golden in harsh, afternoon sunlight.   
  
He wants to wrap himself in her goodness, her youth, her life. He wants a chance to be the person neither his life, nor his death had allowed him to be. He wants--  
  
 _the girl spread-eagled underneath him screaming the potent magic in her blood fueling him because Spike was right so very right nothing like the blood of a Slayer like an aphrodisiac take her turn her torture her forever_  
  
\--like a vice around his being, the soul clenches and complains, douses Angel in shame and guilt, as it has for a hundred years.   
  
But none of that changes the fact that the boy--sleeping so conveniently in his bed--smells like sex and death; like blood and family.  
  
Angel’s hand is clenched into a tight fist, now; soon, blood drips steadily onto Xander’s shoulder.   
  
He turns away from the bed, doing his best to ignore the whispers, and ignore the boy.   
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
“Bloody, sodding hell--!” Spike gasps. It’s been awhile since he last blinked and Xander should know. He’s been staring steadily into Spike’s eyes, mesmerized by the flickering gold and blue he sees in their depths.  
  
Xander pushes into Spike--is drawn slowly, inexorably to the coolest, tightest body he’s ever known. He has Spike’s hands pinned to the bed, and his own eyes are blank, his face grim with concentration.   
  
“Jesus, you’re so tight, so--oh, fuck,” he exhales shakily, staving off coming only by an act of pure will.  
  
 _. . . I just nearly did a_ Xander _, and shot off all over the both of us. . . ._  
  
And could there be a  _less_  convenient time to hear the ghost of lovers past?  
  
“C’mon, pet.” Spike drums a brief tattoo on Xander’s lower back with his heel. “ _Do_  me.”  
  
Xander shakes his head once, quickly. “I’ll come if I move, just--be still a moment, lemme. . . .” he trails off, leaning down till his face is pressed against Spike’s neck. His skin smells like soap and smoke and very faintly of whiskey.  
  
Spike wriggles then relaxes when Xander slides in another half an inch, groaning all the way.  
  
“Spike!”  
  
“Sorry.” Though from the smile in Spike’s voice he’s probably not sorry at all. He takes a breath he doesn’t need and lets it out in a sigh that cools Xander’s cheek. “Wanna know what you feel like, pet? What it’s like to have you in me?”  
  
Xander whimpers out something even he’s not sure is a  _no_.  
  
“Like I’m filled with your heat and your heartbeat,” Spike makes a growling-purring sound and his legs tighten around Xander. “Surrounded by you, drowning in your scent, in your pheromones . . . your pulse pounds and throbs in my ears and in my body. Almost like being alive again. . . .”  
  
“You’re  _so_  not helping,” Xander says through gritted teeth; he bites Spike’s neck hard enough to make him gasp again, hard enough to leave a hickey.  
  
Spike frees his wrists from Xander’s slippery grip and runs his hands soothingly up and down Xander’s arms. “Not like we’re working to a time-table, love,” he whispers. “Let go, if you need to let go.”  
  
“But that wouldn’t be fair.” Xander traces Spike’s jugular vein with his tongue and Spike shivers, arching up like a cat.   
  
“All’s fair in love and war.” Spike’s voice is almost enough to send him over the edge, something that doesn’t surprise Xander at all. He braces himself; just one sharp, hard thrust and he’s home, before Spike or his own desire can sabotage him.  
  
For nearly a minute, neither of them speaks or moves until Spike laughs jaggedly. “You’re gonna scald my insides when you come. I’ll feel you for a week afterwards, you’re so bloody  _hot_.”  
  
Strong muscles twitch and clench around him and nothing, not even picturing the late Principal Snyder in a speedo is gonna keep Xander from coming if Spike doesn’t  _quit it_.  
  
“You’re such a bastard.” Xander sighs, his breath puffing against Spike’s throat.   
  
“Now, that’s just scurrilous rumor, love. My parents were married long before I was conceived.”  
  
Xander laughs and levers himself up on arms that feel pretty shaky, but at least it’s a distraction from his most immediate concern. Spike’s not leering or smirking, but smiling; his eyes are flickering faster than ever, now.   
  
Gold-blue-gold-blue-gold-blue. . . .  
  
“Pet.” His voice is rough, but fond; the hands that are once again caressing Xander’s arms are warm, urgent, and no less gentle. “My pet.”  
  
As if something in him has been waiting to hear exactly that, Xander regains some control, can think past the haze of wanting and having and taking.   
  
 _Okay, I’m pretty sure fucking Spike involves actually fucking him, so_ move _already, LaVelle!_  
  
And the look on Spike’s face when Xander finally withdraws and thrusts back in slowly?  
  
 _Principal Snyder in a speedo,_  Xander has to remind himself.  
  
“Tell me how I feel around you,” Spike pants. Xander reaches up and brushes his fingers across Spike’s brow. The faint suggestion of ridges makes him lose his rhythm for a few moments.  
  
“Change,” he says softly. “Let me see your face.”  
  
Spike looks away, frowning. “No.”  
  
“Let me see your face.” Xander changes his rhythm from slow and smooth, to fast and hard, watching Spike carefully, waiting for--  
  
There’s that strange crackle that Xander knows means facial bones are shifting and Spike suddenly lets out a brief roar.  
  
 _Bingo. Hello, Mr. Prostate. . . ._  
  
Gold eyes flash up at him and in less than a second, Xander’s looking down into the face of a demon.  
  
“Happy, now?” Spike growls sarcastically, but the flicker of blue in his his gold eyes belies the sarcasm. Xander leans in for a kiss, being careful of the fangs more for Spike’s sake than his own.   
  
“You feel like cool satin wrapped around my cock. Tight, soft and amazing. You feel better than I imagined.”  
  
A surprised blink. “You really imagined this?”  
  
Xander nods, doing his best not to blush. “Never thought it’d actually happen, but yeah.”  
  
“Well, bloody hell.” The soft, civility of his voice is disorienting, coming out of a mouth made for rending and roars.  
  
 _And kisses._ Xander kisses Spike again, shivering at the keen slide of fangs across his tongue.   
  
“Not lettin’ you go any time soon,” Spike murmurs on Xander’s lips. “Hope you don’t have a problem with that.”  
  
 _You could keep me forever, if you wanted to. . . ._ Xander thinks, looking down into waiting gold eyes. Suddenly, it’s three years ago and Xander wants more than anything to be claimed. His veins seem to burn with wanting and needing Jesse--  
  
 _Not Jesse,_ Spike _. . . I’m with Spike. . . ._  
  
Spike who wants him, but may not necessarily want to  _keep_  him.   
  
 _Jesse was my best friend; he knew me all my life and he didn’t wanna keep me . . . at least not then. Why would Spike want to, now?_  
  
And that’s what it all comes down to, right? Being with whoever wants you the most?  
  
Xander doubts that’s Spike.  
  
“Love, what’s wrong?”   
  
Spike’s voice is very far away, now. Xander can barely hear it over the rustling of the sheets, the  _whish_  of the clothing he’s yanking on.  
  
“Pet--” Suddenly, Spike’s right in front of him—damn his freaky vampire-speed--putting strong hands over Xander’s as he starts buttoning his shirt.   
  
He struggles, tries to push Spike away, but Spike doesn’t budge.  
  
“Look at me, Xander,” he says softly. So softly, Xander knows he’s not in gameface anymore. That means it’s safe to look; that there’s a chance Xander won’t blurt out anything stupid and embarrassing.  
  
Taking a deep, shuddery breath, he meets Spike’s gaze . . . and if anything, the concern in his dark blue eyes makes Xander even more helpless.  
  
“Claim me?” He asks, tilting his head to the side, lowering his eyes submissively.  
  
Spike drops Xander’s hands in surprise. But a second later, one room temperature finger brushes down his throat thoughtfully, fleetingly. Spike notes Xander’s shiver with a slight frown.  
  
“Already been claimed, haven’t you, pet?”  
  
Pity? Sympathy? Whatever it is, Xander doesn’t want to hear it from Spike and certainly not directed at him. He tries to push Spike away again but Spike’s still having none of it. Before he can open his mouth to tell Spike to  _let go_  and  _leave me alone_ , Xander’s being picked up and laid on the bed so gently, it doesn’t even creak.  
  
“I want you. No secret, that.” Spike’s in gameface again, kneeling between Xander’s legs and pinning his hands. Utter serenity seems to radiate out of his eyes--which is just plain  _odd_. But no odder than how quickly that look calms Xander’s nerves and breathing.   
  
Spike leans down to nuzzle his neck teasingly. “Want you enough to take you--to  _fight_  for you . . . do you want me?”  
  
Xander nods once. He can feel Spike's sharp smile on the hyper-sensitized skin of his throat.  
  
“Dunno why that silly tosser didn’t keep you. Dunno what he told you or why . . . whether he meant it or not. But that was in the past. I’m not him. I’m not some fledge with grave-dirt still under my nails. I’m  _Spike_. I know what I want and I don’t run in the other direction after I’ve taken it.  
  
“I  _keep_  what’s mine. Do you wanna be mine, love?”  
  
Xander nods once more then says: “yes”, just in case, inviting a vampire to claim you is like inviting them into your home.   
  
"You sure?"  
  
Fangs prick Xander’s throat and he smiles up at the ceiling. “Yes.”


	13. 13

**August, 1997**  
  
“Please. . . .”   
  
The soft, lost voice is more than enough to wake Angel out of a thin sleep in his uncomfortable chair.  
  
Xander is out of bed on wobbly legs, looking around Angel’s apartment as if he’s never seen it before. His body is pale and gaunt-looking, his face masked in miserable shadows.   
  
“Jesse?” Dark, confused eyes meet Angel’s. “You have to help me, please . . . help me find Jesse?”  
  
“Xander, you should be resting,” Angel says quietly, standing up as slowly and non-threateningly as he can. “Let me help you back to bed.”  
  
“No--I have to find him, he doesn’t know where I am anymore.” A tear runs down his face and when Angel reaches him, takes his arms, Xander sags tiredly against him.  
  
“I’m so weak, I can’t even--” Xander trails off, trembling with exhaustion.   
  
“That’s partly the blood-loss.” Angel picks Xander up and carries him to the bed, avoiding his eyes. His body temperature is still slightly low, for a human. “And partly the claim.”  
  
“Claim?”   
  
After laying Xander down and fussing with the sheets for a few minutes, Angel lets himself meet the haunted eyes. “Jesse claimed you, made you his own.”  
  
Xander blinks rather vacantly. “I belong to Jesse.”   
  
Angel doesn’t know if that’s agreement or dementia, so he steps over that statement for the time being.  
  
“But since Jesse’s--no longer here, and won’t, um--”  _gee, what’s a nice way to say drinking from you and fucking you till the bond sticks?_  “--won’t be claiming you on a regular basis, your body’s gonna go through something like withdrawal. You’ll feel weak and lost and a little--”  _a little nuts._  “Well, you’ll feel a like you’re not too stable sometimes, but you’re not. It’s all just physiological.”  _Except for that pesky spiritual decay. . . ._    
  
Angel takes Xander’s hands and holds them loosely, so he can pull away if he wants to. “I don’t know exactly how long these . . . symptoms will last, in your case. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months--until the bond withers and dies.”  _Or till_ you _wither and die._  
  
Xander looks down at his hands in Angel’s and pulls them away, shaking his head.  
  
“You don’t understand . . . Jesse loves me. He said so, and we’re gonna be together and--”   
  
\--and Angel knows that Xander hadn’t been listening to a single word he’d said for, like, a long time.  
  
“. . . know you hate me but please,  _please_  help me find Jesse?” Xander whispers, tears running down his cheeks.  
  
“I don’t hate you, Xander.” Angel feels oddly helpless in the face of  _Xander Harris’s_  tears.  
  
“Then  _help me_.” Xander looks up; his face is all wet, desperately unhappy eyes and ashy complexion. “You’re, like, a superhero; you could find Jesse if you wanted to.”  
  
Angel doesn’t even bother to deny that he could. Xander’s family--technically, anyway--and if you can’t be marginally honest with family. . . .  
  
“I won’t help you find your soulless, demon-lover, Xander, and if you can’t see the crazy-making wrongness of those adjectives--”  
  
“Jesse  _loves_  me! He’d never hurt me, he said so!”   
  
That kind of stubborn insistence, coupled with Xander’s sudden anger--he can smell Xander’s blood like the boy just opened up a vein--makes Angel’s demon want to reach out and--  
  
“Jesse already left you once,” he says softly. One thing his century-plus of being Angelus has prepared him for is being a bastard on demand. “How many hints does he have to drop before you start picking them up?”  
  
“He--” Xander’s thinks for a minute. “He got scared at the last minute . . . went to take a walk, or something. Clear his head. And then . . . I  _know_  he came back! But you took me away and now he doesn’t know how to find me!”  
  
“He claimed you, Xander. As long as that bond exists between you, he could track you all the way to the ends of the Earth.”   
  
“Look--Jess got scared and chickened out, BFD!” Xander’s voice cracks and falters. “I  _know_  him; whenever he has big promise to keep, he agonizes and angsts over it. But eventually, he keeps his word. Jesse has  _never_  broken a promise to me and not having a soul isn’t gonna change that.”  
  
“After I got turned, I spent my nights torturing and killing people. I broke every bond or promise I’d ever made and I killed everyone I had ever loved as a man.  _Ate_ , not turned.” Angel smiles coldly but, at the same time the soul is insisting Angel’s doing the right thing, it’s berating him for hurting this boy, who really is still just that. “But maybe your Jesse’ll be the exception that proves the rule, huh?”   
  
Xander’s mouth works like he wants to sob or scream, but nothing comes out at all and the soul twists and writhes like it’s being tortured.  
  
“Listen--” Angel begins, uncertain of what it is he wants Xander to listen to, only needing to reach out and offer some sort of comfort, however cold that comfort might be.  
  
Xander shakes his head  _no_. “Fuck you, dead-boy.”   
  
But he doesn’t resist the cool hands and arms that pull him closer, into a hug. His face is hot against Angel’s chest and his scent--still red, still sweet, still  _familiar_ \--is even stronger.   
  
 _It’s Jesse’s scent on him that I’m responding to, nothing else. The demon’s intrigued because Xander’s--technically--family._  The soul does its best to convince Angel.  
  
He remains unconvinced.  
  
“God, I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of protecting you,” Angel tells Xander; just another guilty pang to keep all the others company.  
  
“Leave me alone.” The whisper is barely audible, but Angel can feel the shape of the words over his heart.  
  
“I can’t do that.”  
  
“You shoulda let me die. If Jesse really changed his mind about me . . . you shoulda let me die.”  
  
“I couldn’t do that, either.”  
  
Weak arms wrap tentatively around Angel’s back. Nervous fingers clench and unclench in his shirt.  
  
“I don’t know if I wanna keep living if I have to feel this way.” Xander sniffles. That scent of blood and family has, if anything, grown  _stronger_  since the shower. “I’ve lived with this for a day and already it feels like a lifetime.”  
  
“You’ll survive. In time, this  _will_  pass.”  
  
“What if I don’t want it to pass?”  
  
Angel has to stop inhaling because the scent, though not enough to make him do something . . . regrettable, is painfully tempting. “I know it sounds trite, but--if you live for the people who need you, in time you’ll figure out how to live for yourself, again.”  
  
Xander starts laughing around a throat full of tears. “What planet are  _you_  living on, broody? People who need _Xander Harris_?”  
  
“Willow needs you, so does Giles. So does Buffy.” A thought that bothers Angel much less than Xander probably thinks.  
  
“No . . . they  _like_  me--well, I’m pretty sure Wills and Buffy do--but they don’t need me. If I was gone, they’d be sad for awhile, but they’d move on, just like they did when Jess--Willow and Buffy’ll survive just fine without me. The only person who ever needed me was Jesse. He still does.”  
  
Sensing that now is not the time to illustrate the difference between Jesse and Jesse’s demon, Angel thinks over his response to that very carefully before speaking.  
  
“Maybe . . . Jesse didn’t want to see you die. Maybe he loved you too much to turn you into a soulless killing machine . . . maybe he put your needs ahead of his own.”  
  
Xander laughs again. “You don’t know Jesse, man.  _I’m_  the one who takes care of  _him_. I’m the one who keeps him out of trouble, I’m the one who loves him.”  
  
“Not anymore.”  
  
Which is what this all comes down to, isn’t it? Whatever Xander feels for the demon in his friend’s body, whatever the demon feels for him--and Angel doesn’t doubt that it feels some twisted, dark species of love and obligation toward Xander, and a healthy dose of fledgling hormones to boot--that part of Xander’s life is now over.   
  
Whether Xander believes the demon is Jesse or not, Jesse is gone for good this time.  
  
The sudden fit of shudders that takes Xander tells Angel that on some level, even if it’s buried deep, this truth is understood, and is just waiting to be accepted.  
  
“It hurts.”   
  
“It won’t always.” Angel pretty sure that it  _will_  always hurt, but in time, that hurt will grow distant, will get buried under the rest of Xander’s life.  
  
“No, not that--well, yeah, that, but I--ache.”  
  
“Where?”   
  
“All over . . . feels like my veins are on fire; they itch and burn.”  
  
“That’s perfectly normal considering your--situation.” Not that Xander’s situation is in any way  _normal_.  
  
“My neck feels hot and cold and throbby--” Angel realizes that the scent of blood that he’d thought was wishful thinking might not be. He lets go of Xander and tilts his head to the side.  
  
The punctures have reopened and twin trails of blood are leaking sluggishly down Xander’s neck. It’s a deep, arterial red, thicker and darker than what would come out of a more superficial wound.  
  
“The wound’s reopened . . . I’ll--I’ll get some bandaids--” which Angel is fairly certain he doesn’t have. He stands up, but Xander grabs his hand, a small smile on his face. It doesn’t reach his eyes.  
  
“Why let it go to waste?” He asks, turning his head to the side in clear invitation.  
  
“No,” Angel says, wondering if he’s still asleep in his chair; if he’ll wake up drinking the boy down like a bottle of root beer. “No, Xander.”  
  
“Yes. Please?”   
  
“You don’t know what you’re asking. What you’re offering.” But Angel does, so why isn’t he pulling away and getting a damn bandaid? Even if it means a trip to the all-night mini-mart, getting away from Xander is sounding like a very good idea.  
  
And why,  _why_  is he letting Xander pull suddenly nerveless fingers up to the two, ragged holes in his neck?  
  
They both shiver when Angel’s fingers brush the wound. Human pheromones seem to explode into the air, strong and desperate. Angel wants to slip into gameface just to get a better whiff, just to--  
  
“This isn’t a good idea,” he says. Says mostly because that’s what the damn soul is screaming at him. The demon, however, is oddly silent. And watchful, as always.  
  
“Believe me, I know how good an idea this isn’t,” Xander murmurs meekly, his head tipping back further, eyes fluttering shut in submission. Silent though it is, Angel can feel his demon’s approval. “But don’t stop.”  
  
Angel does stop, however--brings his fingers to his nose and inhales deeply, letting the dark, copper and cinnamon scent wrap his brain ‘round in a warm, red mist. His tongue flicks out to sample and an almost electric shock runs through him. He slides his fingers into his mouth with a soft moan.   
  
Human blood. Sweeter and cleaner than he remembers, tingling and sharp, but with a muted aftertaste like pennies and misery.  
  
It’s been so long. . . .  
  
“So . . . what do I taste like?”   
  
Angel opens eyes he doesn’t remember shutting as the last traces of sharp-sweet blood melt away from his tongue. Xander’s eyes are wide and dilated; the sheet is tented over his lap and that pheromone smell is thicker than ever.  
  
Before the desire even becomes a thought, Angel is on the bed--on Xander. Though he’s focused on the bite mark, he can see Xander lick his lips out of the corner of his eye.  
  
“You taste like more.”  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
“It wasn’t enough,” Xander tells his reflection, touching the shallow punctures in his neck. “The skin is barely broken.”  
  
He sighs and turns to look at Spike, who’s sprawled on the bed, pale and unmoving, like a dead angel.  
  
“It’s like a fire under my skin,” Xander explains, haltingly at first. “It makes my bones ache and my blood itch. I thought it was over--that the need and the crazy were all over years ago, but it’s not. He’s back and I’m going nutty and--I can’t do this again.”   
  
When Spike doesn’t move or respond, Xander sits on the bed next to him, running a hand through sot, platinum hair. “Thank you. You tried to save. I won’t ever forget that you tried, but it wasn’t enough.” He leans down to kiss Spike’s lips, then his chest, right where a heartbeat should be, before standing up.   
  
“He wasn’t the only one who made a promise. Guess it’s time for the both of us to ante-up.”  
  
Xander starts getting dressed for the second time in less than five minutes.  
  


*

  
  
The soft knock on his door isn’t startling or unexpected.  
  
Pausing  _Oddworld_ , he puts down the game controller and gets up, smiling. If he had a reflection, he’d be checking it one last time before opening the door.   
  
But from the scent he’s picking up--has been for the past three minutes and twenty-two seconds--he’s pretty sure he’ll pass muster.  
  
Smiling, he undoes the chain and opens the door of the same motel room he’d had three years ago. A rumpled man stands in front of him, back to the fading daylight, his face shadowed and gaunt.   
  
“Jess,” the man rasps, like he’s been swallowing broken glass all day. He looks like hell. He looks--  
  
 _Beautiful_.  
  
“Xan.” Jesse means to stand aside and let Xander step in, but before he can move, Xander’s pulling him into a harsh, bruising kiss.  
  
Jesse maneuvers them both into the room and shuts the door, not bothering with the chain. He walks them to the bed without breaking the kiss; his hands are everywhere at once and Xander’s are trying to be.  
  
Jesse hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed the taste, the scent, the  _feel_ \--the  _Xander-heat_.   
  
Didn’t realize how angry the scent of that other vampire on Xander--the  _taste_  o that other vampire in Xander’s mouth--would make him.  
  
Jesse breaks the kiss and shoves Xander down to the bed, straddling his legs. Xander tries to sit up, but Jesse holds him down on the bed effortlessly.  
  
“Has he had you?” Other-vamp’s scent is so strong, Jesse can’t even tell. All he knows is that his claim, such as it is, hasn’t been challenged.  
  
“No,” Xander shakes his head  _no_  vehemently, his hair flopping around his face in a way Jesse remembers keenly. “No one but you.”  
  
“No one but me  _ever_ ,” Jesse promises, his voice little more than a growl as he morphs into gameface. “You’re mine, Xan.”  
  
“You still need me?”  
  
“I never stopped, never wanted to leave, but I--there was this vamp, nearly dusted me--” Jesse shudders. Of all the times he’s nearly been dusted, that was still the closest. He’d barely healed enough to make it under cover by dawn. “Broke me into bite-sized, manageable pieces and left me to heal or fry. Told me to get outta dodge and stay away from you--”  
  
“Angel.” Xander laughs; there’s a flash of something hot and baleful in his eyes. “Fucking Angel, I knew it. I’m gonna kill him.”  
  
 _Not even turned and he’s already amped for the kill? Damn, he’s gonna be an awesome childe. . . ._ “We’ll kill him together.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan,” Xander says quietly, then looks away. “Why’d you come back now, after all this time--”  
  
Jesse turns Xander’s face back to his. “Because I can protect you, now. I can  _keep_  you. I’ll kill Angel or any other person--demon or human--who comes between me and what’s mine.”  
  
Xander takes a breath, closes his eyes, but tears still leak out. “I promised you forever; you promised me the same thing.”  
  
“I know, buddy, and I’m gonna give it to you,” Jesse says, brushing Xander’s hair out of his face. More tears leak out and misery wafts out of his pores like alcohol; Jesse’s demon is already drunk on the dizzying scent of it.  
  
One yank and Xander’s shirt is history. There’s dried semen on his chest--not Xander’s--and hickies that Jesse didn’t put there. “I swear, I’m gonna spend the next fifty years killing that limey fuck.”   
  
Another yank and Xander’s pants have gone the way of the shirt.  
  
“Don’t kill him, I--” Xander blushes. “It’s my fault for leading him on--”  
  
Jesse smiles gently at his soft-hearted childe-to-be, running his finger against the seam of Xander’s lips. Instantly, Xander’s mouth opens and a warm tongue curls around Jesse’s finger.   
  
“By the time the sun goes down, Xan, you won’t even care.”  
  


*

  
  
Spike’s return to consciousness is greeted by a headache so fierce, he can barely open his eyes.  
  
 _Goddamn bloody chip,_ he thinks, rolling onto his side with a groan, shielding his sensitive eyes from the dim, filtered light.   
  
“Xander?” He calls, though he knows a second before he does that he’s all alone in the house.  
  
Xander’s gone.   
  
Has been gone long enough for the sheets to cool.   
  
For  _Spike_  to cool.  
  
Judging by the rapidly fading sunlight that shines through the dingy basement curtains, Xander can’t have been gone for  _too_  long. Twenty minutes, perhaps. . . .  
  
 _Like it takes more than that to walk from one point in this town to any other. But I know good and well where he’s gone, don’t I?_  
  
To the vamp who’d already claimed him once before.  
  
To the vamp who’s actually  _capable_  of reclaiming him properly.  
  
Xander’s need to be claimed was so intense--so intermingled with desire, that fucking would’ve turned into claiming whether Spike had wanted it to, or not.   
  
God, what that scent had done to him. What  _Xander_  had done to him.  
  
 _Woulda claimed him and not regretted it for a second . . . woulda kept him._  
  
He can’t imagine why Jesse had done a claim-and-run, but the fact that he’s back, now, and looking to make up for time lost--  
  
And Spike’s just had an awful, awful thought; one that immediately turns into a spot-on certainty.  
  
 _Bastard means to turn him. I can challenge a claim, if I can find away around the chip, but fighting the Sire/childe bond?_  
  
“Either way, it’s not like I’m vamp enough to challenge any kind of claim; no, not Chippy, the Fangless Vamp.” Spike laughs bitterly. “Wasn’t gonna bloody hurt him! I was  _tryin’_  to protect him!”  
  
His voice echoes angrily off the damp basement walls, before dwindling away into nothing. In that moment, Spike decides that when he gets Xander back, he’ll make sure neither he, nor his boy have to continue living in this hovel. No more fast food jobs, no more good-will clothes, no more worn-down shoes.  
  
No more bloody Sunnyhell.  
  
Spike’s already out of bed and pulling on his clothes, headache forgotten, aching muscles ignored. Only one thing matters: Xander is gone. He’s been gone much longer than can be explained by a donut run or a quick walk to clear his head. The vamp that claimed him four years ago, then left, is back in town looking to reconcile, and--  
  
\--the sun’s still up and Xander wouldn’t be able to find Jesse’s lair alone . . . but none of that means a damned thing if Jesse was smart enough to hire himself some non-vamp muscle to keep an eye on Xander, does it?  
  
Jesse might be smart enough to have done just that.  
  
If he had, his goons probably nabbed Xander as soon as he stepped out the front door. Not that Xander would’ve put up much of a fight in his state. Nor would he be too particular about  _who_  it was did the claiming, just so long as _someone_  did.  
  
Which doesn’t feel at all like a knife in his heart.  
  
Spike looks at the clock; five thirty-one p.m., and nowhere near sundown.  
  
He shrugs on his duster and bolts upstairs to the linen closet.   
  



	14. 14

**August, 1997**  
  
Xander frowns as Angel’s body settles on top of his.   
  
Jesse had been pretty substantial, but Angel is . . . heavy in comparison. Solid and cold.  
  
He’s a dead weight, pun intended.  
  
Xander doesn’t love him, or like him; Angel isn’t sweet and snuggly and purr-y, like Jesse had been. But as long as he has a working set of fangs, that doesn’t matter.  
  
Cool lips brush Xander’s neck and he moan when a wet, lukewarm tongue laps at the bite. Angel’s big, cold, dead-man hand worms between their bodies and closes on Xander’s cock through the sheet, surprising enough to make Xander gasp.   
  
It’s a surreal moment, but Mr. Happy is undeterred.   
  
“Please,” Xander sighs, wrapping his arms around Angel when the licking stops and Angel starts to roll away. The blood in his veins suddenly feels hot, super-charged, like quicksilver. The pressure of it is unbearable.   
  
“I can’t, Xander. . . .”   
  
Xander wonders if cutting open a vein would help, or if only a set of fangs would do the job. He suspects it’s the latter.  
  
“You  _can_. Go ahead, do it,” Xander goads Angel, feeling like the world’s worst afterschool special. “You know you wanna. All the cool vamps are doin’ it.”  
  
“God, you talk too much,” Angel mutters, but settles on Xander again. His cold, thankfully dry nose presses against Xander’s neck. “What the hell are we doing?”   
  
“Hey--less brooding, more biting, pal.”  
  
Angel sits up enough to look into Xander’s eyes. “I know how you feel.”  
  
“I guess so. You’re feelin’ me right now, aren’tcha big guy?” Xander squirms under Angel’s distracted stroking.   
  
“Oh.” Now that Angel notices what his hand is still doing, he stops and pulls away; his pained scowl is suggestive of a blush.  
  
“I meant--I know what you’re feeling. Emotionally. And--”  
  
“No, I don’t think you do,” Xander interrupts quietly. “I don’t like you. I think, given time enough, I could hate you. None of which changes the fact that I kinda want you.”  
  
“You  _want_  Jesse,” Angel corrects him.  
  
“I want to  _forget_  about Jesse. If that means you have to drink my blood, drink it. If that means you have to fuck me while you drink my blood--go for it. But don’t leave me like this. That’s beyond even vamp cruelty.”  
  
“You don’t know the first thing about vamp cruelty, Xander.” Angel does roll off of Xander now, which though frustrating, provides an opportunity to take a much needed deep breath. “Though you might have found out if Jesse hadn’t left town.”  
  
Xander turns on his side, facing away from Angel and his stupid  _logic_. “Jesse wouldn’t have been cruel to me. He wouldn’t have  _had_  to. I’d have done anything he asked.”  _I was gonna give up my soul for him,_  
  
“Cruelty is a part of what vampires are.” Angel’s hand touches his shoulder gently. It’s still a big, cold, dead-man hand, but it doesn’t freak Xander out. He suspects that his freak-o-meter has spent so much time in the red over the past year, it’s finally broken. “It’s how we live and how we love.”  
  
“--and I’m ever so glad you’re dating my friend--”  
  
“Do you even understand the nature of a claim, Xander?”  
  
“I belong to Jesse,” Xander murmurs softly, ruefully.  
  
“Yeah, which means he could do whatever he wanted to you. He could leave you in chains, beat you, starve you, trade you off to other vampires--like a kid with a baseball card he’s gotten sick of. Or he could keep you and use you, till you’re all used up. Then have his minions dump the carcass when it started to smell.”  
  
Xander closes his eyes tightly, not wanting Angel to smell his tears. “You know, when I said that given time I could hate you, I didn’t think the time could be counted down in mere minutes. You’re amazing, dead-boy--”  
  
He’s barely finished his sentence when pain explodes in his left arm, which has been wrenched up behind him. So far, in fact, that he could conceivably scratch the back of his own head.  
  
“I seem to remember telling you not to call me dead-boy, Xander.” Angel’s voice puffs into his ear on a dry, cold breath that’s no drier or colder than the voice it carries. Xander tries to free his arm but all he gets for his exertions is more pain and further wrenching. “Call me that again and I’ll twist your arm right out of the socket.”  
  
“Ow--fuck-- _ow_!” The lump of molten lead that is his arm  _already_  feels like it’s out of socket. Or maybe torn off completely. “You fucking psycho, get the fuck offa me!”  
  
Angel does the exact opposite, maneuvering Xander onto his stomach. The weight of Angel’s big, dead-man body--on top of the scary vamp-strength that’s easily keeping his arm in a vice--is so painful, Xander can’t think beyond _please stop please stop oh god stop please stop!_  
  
Or, at least that’s all he can think till Angel pushes his legs apart.  
  
Suddenly, Xander’s brain is cracking code like Turing, crunching numbers like Einstein and yeah, he doesn’t like what his near-future is adding up to. Not at all.  
  
“No--” arm bedamned, he tries to twist away and thrash. But one warning yank on his arm and his fight wavers just long enough for Angel to settle between his legs with a sinister chuckle and this is so. Not. Happening.  
  
“You don’t get to tell me no, boy.”   
  
It’s Angel’s scary-vamp voice; Xander’s heard it before, just not directed at him. Oh, crap, does he feel bad for all the vamps and demons Angel’s killed.  
  
“You can’t--you’re a good guy, you can’t--” Xander gasps out, slipping into full-on panic mode.  
  
“You wanted me to claim you, make you forget about Jesse. That’s what I’m gonna do.” A low, scratching sound that’s Angel’s fly being unzipped, because this week? The universe seems to hate Xander  _just that much_. “When you’re mine, if I even  _think_  you’ve got someone on your mind other than me, I’ll beat you bloody.”  
  
“No--”  
  
“But don’t worry . . . it’s not gonna always be about discipline.” Angel’s grip on Xander’s arm relaxes enough for the real pain to start as blood flows into tingling veins, and angry muscles protest the harsh treatment. A whimper escapes on his sigh of relief.  
  
“Maybe I’ll turn you, hmm? That way, no matter how many times I break you, you’ll heal right up--”  
  
“Angel, please don’t--”  
  
“--and I promise.” Angel leans very close to nip at Xander’s earlobe with teeth that are too sharp to be human. “In a few decades, you’ll learn to love the pain. They all do.”  
  
Then Angel’s big, strong, dead-man hands are on Xander’s hips, pulling them up and back and--and--sweet, technicolor dream-coat--a thick, hard  _something_  brushes the crack of Xander’s ass.  
  
“ _No_!”  
  
The nipping turns into a bite that’s hard enough to make him yelp.  
  
“I  _said_  you don’t get to say no to me.” Oh, God, Angel’s starting to push the thickhardsomething forward at the same time he’s pulling Xander’s hips back and  _fuck_  taking it like a man. Xander starts crying like a frightened girl.  
  
“. . . don’t please hate you get away stop don’t Angel please. . . .” and on and on for hours, it feels like. He’s so caught up in begging and pleading and hoping Angel’s savior-instinct kicks in, that he doesn’t even notice the thickhardsomething is gone and his hips have been released.  
  
When he realizes he’s now free and mostly unraped, Xander’s relief is so profound that he feels it prudent to curl up in a tiny ball, cradle his aching arm and start shuddering.  
  
“Xander--”   
  
“You are a bad,  _bad_  vamp!” Xander glances over his shoulder to make sure Angel’s keeping his distance. The aforementioned bad vamp is sitting at the foot of the bed, one hesitant hand hovering over Xander’s right ankle.   
  
Xander tries his best to pull that ankle out of reach. “Very bad!”  
  
Angel slowly lowers his hand to the bed. “I won’t touch you, just calm down.”  
  
“Calm down?  _Calm down_? You didn’t have to--I would’ve let you --” he can’t even finish that sentence. He suddenly knows that no, he  _wouldn’t_  have  _let_  Angel either drink from him or fuck him, because—  
  
“You’re nothing like Jesse.” Xander accuses.   
  
“No, I’m not,” Angel says quietly.   
  
And all it took to drivehome that piece of fun trivia was almost getting raped.   
  
 _Almost getting raped?_  Xander’s traitor of a brain whispers.  _Wow, you’re proof positive that amateur reverse-psychology works really well on overwrought dumbasses. That’s good to know._  
  
Xander groans as the Blush of Total Mortification creeps over his skin; he feels around for the sheets that are bunched up behind him and drags them over his head. Then over the rest of himself, as an afterthought.   
  
“You coulda just said  _no, Xander, I don’t want to claim you_.”   
  
The traitor-brain reminds him that Angel  _had_  said words to that effect.   
  
 _Hey, whose side are you on, poindexter!_  Xander thinks, which seems to shut his brain up. Meanwhile, Angel’s voice is bland enough to nudge the freak-o-meter out of the red and into the black.   
  
“I had to make you understand that if I claimed you, you wouldn’t just be trading one master for another. Believe me . . . you’d hate me a lot more if you wore my claim.”  
  
Xander pushes back the covers just enough to peer at Angel. “I don’t think it’s possible for me to hate you any more than I do right now,” he says, and starts crying, or laughing or  _something_  that involves both blurry vision and aching sides.   
  
Angel watches him with a confused sort of frown, then walks into the kitchen. “I’ll just, um, give you a few minutes to--process.”  
  
 _Process? Oh, my, someone’s been watching_ Oprah. . . .  
  
Which sends Xander off to the races again. He’s laughing so hard he forgets to be curled up in a fetal ball and sprawls on his back, tangled in the sheets and shaking hysterically.   
  
 _Hmm . . . this might be one of those unstable times Angel mentioned. . . ._  
  
Now, Xander’s face has joined the chorus of complaining body parts. Not really distracting him from the steady, burning throb of his arm or his ear, but better than nothing.  
  
When the last of the giggles tapers off, Angel drifts in from the kitchen and leans against the wall furthest from Xander, crossing his arms and trying to look non-threatening.  
  
 _Yeah, and while you’re attempting to break the laws of physics, Angel, could you be a pal and make water run uphill? Thanks._  
  
“Are you okay, now?”  
  
“Not even remotely . . . hey, Angel?”   
  
“Yes, Xander?” There’s a note of sympathy in Angel’s monotone and Xander doesn’t want to know he knows the difference.   
  
“I get why you won’t claim me. You think I don’t, but I do. And, at least you--at least you actually  _have_  someone else.” Xander scrubs the last of the tears off his face and looks up at the ceiling. “Jesse had a choice of being with me or being alone. I guess that second option looked a little more attractive than mouthy, gawky teenager with a ten-dollar-a-week comic book habit.”  
  
“I don’t think he left because he didn’t want you.”  
  
“Then why  _did_  he leave?”  
  
“Why does anyone ever leave anyone? Because he felt he had to.”  
  
Xander lets out the breath he tells himself he wasn’t holding. “Oh, well, that explains everything, oh, wise guru. Ever  _so_  glad I climbed this mountain to seek your holy wisdom.”  
  
But even as he mocks, he wonders.  _Jesse’s reasons for leaving--whatever they were--may not have had anything to do with me. Not in a negative way. Maybe . . . maybe what Angel had said about Jesse putting his own needs second was true. . . .  
  
Yeah. Right._  
  
Xander’s eyes are getting that burning-welling feeling again and he shuts his eyes as tight as he can, though this night has proved, if nothing else, that resistance is futile.  
  
 _Hey, Xan? Maybe I left because I got sick of the taste of you and just couldn’t be bothered to snap your loser neck?_  Jesse’s voice whispers inside his mind.  _Or maybe I just couldn’t be bothered to finish you off, I mean, soulless fiend here, or didn’t you notice? Probably hard to notice_ anything _with your ass in the air begging me to fuck you and keep you and love you. How pathetic can you be?_  
  
“Apparently very,” Xander murmurs, wiping at his eyes.   
  
 _We were friends, once, and even a vamp’s gotta show a little love for his childhood bud, but--come on? Me, spend eternity with your stupid questions and stupider jokes? Having you depend on me and drag me down--having to make sure every idiot with a stake and a hero-complex doesn’t dust your dopey ass? Is it, like, a huge shock that I walked away from you--fuck,_ ran?   
  
“Hey.”  
  
Snapped out of another lovely, downward spiral into despair, Xander opens his eyes. Angel is looming over him broodily, and his current scowl is concern-flavored. “Whatever it is the voices in your head are saying--now would be a good time to stop listening.”  
  
“I--” Xander sighs and doesn’t even try to lie. “How’d you know?”  
  
“You’re not the only person I know who hears voices.” This is said simply, and with no explanation. Xander’s not willing to push his luck by asking for one. “In time, you won’t hear them as much. Or you’ll at least learn when not to listen.”   
  
“Uh-hu, and how long will that take? Will I ever feel . . . happy again? Or at least as happy as I've ever felt?"  _How long before I stop missing and wanting Jesse, and start hating him? How long till it feels better?_  
  
“That depends.” A suitably cryptic answer. Xander senses a tentative return of the status quo.  
  
“Oh, yeah? On what?”   
  
Angel’s eyes narrow, as if he’s taking Xander’s measure. “Still wanna trade one master for another, boy?”  
  
“No!”  
  
A slight smile. “Then I’d say you've got as much chance of being happy any other denizen of the Hellmouth. Come on. You’ve had enough excitement for one night. You really need to get some rest.”  
  
When Xander yawns in the middle of a half-hearted protest, Angel wordlessly straightens the sheets and tucks him in, either ignoring or not noticing Xander’s instinctive flinching away.   
  
Once everything’s been arranged to his liking, Angel reaches for the bedside lamp.  
  
“Um, Angel?”  
  
He pauses, his hand on the switch. “Yeah?  
  
“It  _is_  gonna get better eventually?”  
  
“Give it time.” There’s a lightening of Angel’s scowl that’s almost smile-ish. Then the lamp clicks off and the apartment is completely dark. There are rustling sounds and a sigh as Angel sits in his chair.   
  
“Angel?”  
  
“Yes, Xander?”  
  
“I’m afraid of the dark.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Nope.”   
  
Angel sighs wearily, which makes Xander smile just a bit. “ _Good night_ , Xander.”  
  
“Night-night, dead-boy.”  
  
Xander stares up into the darkness for three whole minutes before he has to ask.  
  
“Hey, Angel?”  
  
“Yeah?” Angel sounds exasperated now, and grumpy. Another sign of the returning status quo that spreads relief through Xander like wildfire.  
  
“That whole, um, you know-- _raping me_  thing . . . that  _was_  just bullshit reverse-psychology, right?”  
  
For a long time, there’s no answer, only a silence filled with waiting, and a dark smile that Xander can sense on his rescuer’s lips.  
  
“Right?”   
  
More silence.   
  
“Angel!” When Xander’s voice cracks on the second syllable, an amused, rather disturbing chuckle fills the darkness.  
  
“Go to sleep, Xander.”  
  
 _Yeah, not likely, perv-boy,_  he thinks with a shudder. But before he can say it aloud, sleep takes him.  
  
  
 **June, 2000**  
  
He's literally on fire as he bursts into  _Willy’s_ , slamming the door on the killer sunshine.  
  
“Yo, Spike! Compadre!”  
  
Willy’s nervously ebullient welcome is mostly lost on him, as he’s quite absorbed in putting himself out.   
  
When it’s all over but for the smoke and burnt patches of skin, Spike strolls into the bar proper, gracing Willy with a smudgy, sharp-edged smile.  
  
“I believe you have some information for me, William,” he calls.  
  
Willy grins hugely, which is never a good thing, except for when it is. “You’re in luck, my plasma-slurping chum. It just so happens that your Jesse is a pretty high profile guy, back east. O-neg?”  
  
Willy holds up a decanter and a glass as Spike drops his singed and holey blanket on the heads of  _Willy’s_  only other customer: a depressed-looking Karthekk. The Karthekk merely grunts and makes a mournful, gurgling sound.  
  
“Tempting, but no. Just spit it out or I’ll start removing bits of you as . . . incentive to talk.” Spike flashes a bit of gameface at the diminutive bartender, who quails--and pales, which is a neat feat, considering he’s already nearly as white as Spike--and shelves the blood.  
  
“You’re a vamp with a mission--that’s what I like about you, Spike.” Willy clears his throat as Spike leans the bar-top angrily. “Right, uh--let’s see, um . . . Jesse Koval, 1981, born and raised here in good old Sunnyheap. Died and rose in September of ‘96, sired by--”  
  
“Fast forward, git, this isn’t  _A &E Biography_! I’m not payin’ you by the word!” Spike snaps. The wood of the bar cracks and splinters where he’s clutching the edge of it; the sound is quick and brutal, like a bone breaking or a gunshot. “Just tell me where his lair is?”  
  
“Okay, okay, the DDI, on the outskirts of town, number six! Easy on my bar, guy, it’s not covered by crazy-vamp insurance!” Willy swats at Spike’s hands with a stainy, less than clean towel. Spike sneers nastily.  
  
“See? Was that so hard?” Willy makes a very discourteous gesture and Spike snorts. “Ta, Willy, got me a spot of killin’ to do.”  
  
“Yeah, whatever, don’t forget your little blankie, there.”  
  
Spike snatches up the blanket off the still-gurgling Karthekk on his way to the door.  
  
“Ah, crap, wait--before you go there’s something you  _really_  gotta hear about this guy, Jesse-- _Spike_!” Willy calls after him.  
  
But Spike’s gone in a puff of smoke and profanity.  
  



End file.
